Chapter 104
Her cheeks were aflame, the constant drizzle of tears doing little to soothe the burn. Rhysand hadn't moved from her side since they dropped onto the chaise near the small heart. Hadn't said anything either. But she knew that somehow he heard every single word of the rambling pouring from her mouth, even though she barely knew what she was saying herself.
"I-I can't help it," she wheezed, hand fisted around the material of her nightgown at her chest, mimicking the constriction on her heart. "Something inside of me is missing and I don't know how to find it. I don't think I ever can andâand it hurts. I want to be here." She didn't know whether the statement was to convince him, or herself. "But I feel so lost. I think it's because I shouldn't be here at all."
He stroked the back of her hair, keeping his thoughts behind steeled eyes. "That must be hard." Squeezing her eyes, Arwen bowed her head toward her lap, resting her forehead on arms crossed over her thighs. A pause lapsed. "Have you told anybody else how you're feeling? Azriel?"
"No," she rasped.
"You need to tell him. If you don't, I will."
Her head whipped up, a painful strain shooting down her neck as she shot her brother a wide-eyed expression. "No," she repeated, reaching out to seize his wrist. "No-no-no you can't, Rhys. You can't!" His frown told her all she needed to know and panic swelled like a wild current inside her. "I want to forget." It slipped out before she could think about what she asked for, but she didn't take it back. Her nails dug into his tanned skin. "Erase it. The decision. I don't want to feel like this anymore and he doesn't need to know. Please, Rhys."
He stared at her, long and hard. "I know the feeling," he said eventually, and Arwen knew her wish would not be granted. Tearing her hand back to herself, she brought her heels to the chaise and buried her face between her nose, another sob racking through her body. "Memory erasure is tricky," he continuedâa careful, soft tone. "I can't just pick things out. It's like a thread; you pull on it and it begins to unravel everything. You would forget weeks of your life."
Gathering enough of herself, she choked out, "I can live with that."
"Can you? Think about everything that happened between when we went to the Day Court and today. You would lose too much."
Azriel. She would lose Azriel. Or rather, Azriel would lose her as she would be the one to not remember. Her teetering grip on life was the push they needed to be raw with each other.
"And I don't think it will help you," Rhys added after a moment, gently attempting to pry her arm away from encasing her face, but she refused. "What you're feeling might not change, even if you didn't understand it. It is just going to take time."
Her brothers' hand settled between her shoulder blades instead, just about the jagged stems of her once-wings. "I can't do it anymore," she whispered. "I can't stand this feeling, I can't breathe." The very air turned hot and thick, choking her as it clogged her lungs. That constriction on her heart grew, spreading further and deeper into her chest like talons clawing into her flesh. She lifted her head to try and take in more air, but no matter how hard she breathed, that strangling sensation wouldn't fade.
Slipping to his knees in front of her, Rhysand took a firm grip on both her hands, pulling them away from her hair which they had begun to tear through. "Arwen, you need to focus on me."
She looked to the window, trying to remember if there were latches to open itâto let in cool and fresh air. Air grated in her throat, rough and coarse enough that she could hear her own wheezes. The tears streaming down her cheeks became itchy so she yanked on her arms to try to scratch it away, a scream building in her chest when she couldn't.
Rhysand tightened his grip on her arms, keeping them hovering between them. "Count to ten, then backwards. I'll do it with you." He started counting and she heard the numbers in the back of her head, a dark and titillating sound, compelling her to count with it. Her mouth followed automatically.
A noise came from the hallway outside. She twisted her head to locate the source, but her brother relented one of her hands to guide her face forward again, his palm remaining against the side of her head, acting almost as a blinker on a horse's bridle, eradicating anything but what was directly before her. Even when the door to the bedroom opened, Arwen only looked at him and Rhysand seemed to pretend he heard nothing.
Her lips trembled as the counting thinned out but the panic had receded, had ebbed to a small manageable crumble, pushed into the dusty corner of her mind.
"I'm going to put you to sleep," he said, quietly. "Is that okay?"
Wanting nothing more than to close her eyes and be done with the day, Arwen nodded, already giving in to the tug on her consciousness.
~
Rhysand leant forward, catching Arwen's weight in his arm. He ignored Azriel's looming, silently demanding presence until he had situated her somewhat comfortably along the chaise. He didn't look away from her resting face for a long while, not wanting to meet that of his brother's, deciding what he would say now that Rhys realised that Azriel needed to know the things he had picked up from his sister's mind, the passing snatches he caught now that her defences had lowered, and what she had just admitted.
Azriel knelt by the curved chaise arm, a deep frown lining his face as he ran his fingers through his mate's hair. "I'm sorryâI was sleeping. I didn't realise that..." Rhys shook his head, cutting him off. "Is she alright?" he asked, quieter than Rhys had ever heard him before. Not quiet in volume, but temperament.
"At the moment, she's okay. But we need to talk, Az."
"Right now?"
Rhys glanced to his own mate who had stopped in the doorway, arms folded over her nightclothes, worry creasing her brows, then to the bed he had been minutes from crawling into, the moon high above them. It was well past midnight. "Yeah, right now."
~
Arwen flipped the page in her book, elbows making divots in the soft material of the reclined chair, legs laid stretched out behind her. The inked words were a distraction from the more painful ink being carved into her skin at the low of her back. Some areas were more sensitive than others but right now she had a break. The artist took her dear time, that was for certain. But she was glad for it at the same time.
The bell hanging over the door rang. The artist stopped briefly but on a glance at who strode in, went back to work. Arwen, however, glared. "You're not supposed to be here."
Cassian examined the room before looking down at her, his tall form like a mountain over her as she lay flat. "Azriel said you were getting a tattoo and wouldn't tell him what you were getting. I wanted to find out."
"It was going to be a surprise to all of you," she replied dryly. "But since you're here..." Arwen nodded to the space behind her. "It's not big or that Illyrian but I wanted the design."
Rhys had given her the day off. Not that she had been working so hard she needed to break, but it was more of a command to spend the day out of the house, doing something other than her usual business.
Cassian moved to the side of the table opposite the artist and peered at her exposed back. Other than the pants, Arwen only wore bindings around her chest for modesty, knowing what she intended to spend the day on before she arrived. "What does it mean?"
"One for each of you." Stars. She was getting stars scattered at the back of her hip. "O-ow!"
His low laugh reverberated throughout the shop.
"I'm on the last one," the artist said, amusement slipping through.
"You've got eight," Cassian noted, leaning closer to peer at them.
Arwen let her book fold close and counted aloud on her fingers. "Feyre, Rhys, you, Azriel, Mor, Amren, Nesta, Elain. Motherâthis is so much worse than making a bargain!" Her eyes screwed shut as she placed her forehead on the table.
"Nearly done," the artist muttered, concentrated.
Cassian gave the back of her should a comforting rub. "You're including them?"
Them. It didn't need elaboration. "By all legal terms they are my family," she said through gritted teeth, forcing her head back up. "Besides, family doesn't always get along, but they still belong on there. This last one is definitely Nesta, though."
When the artist rose and said, "Done," Arwen let out an awful sound and let herself slump completely. Sitting up, she let the artist clean away the remnants of ink and blood and lightly bandage her stomach.
"I think I'll stick with bargains from now on," she muttered, breathless.
Cassian stood at her knees, smiling. "Give me your hands." With an eye of caution, she laid her hands in his far larger and rougher ones. He lifted them, forcing her arms overhead, earning a wince from Arwen. "Your muscles have been tensed; you've got to stretch them out otherwise you'll start cramping."
They moved through a sequence, his hands pulling and pushing her body into positions it didn't really wish to be in, but after each release, she felt immense relief. When they were done, she slipped from the table and took another breath.
Peeking at her companion, she couldn't help but ask, "Did you really just come to see the tattoo?" Cassian's patience might not be his virtue, but he certainly wasn't the type to fly across town just to see the small, inked art before everybody else.
He shrugged. "Thought you could use the company." She stared at him, blindly fixing her shirt back over her stomach. "It's my day off and I didn't want to spend it listening to everybody else working. Why don't we go get lunch?"
"I could use some food."
They took an outside table at a restaurant neither of them had been to before. The seats were rather unsuited to his wings so they dragged the table up to a stone ledge making the perimeter of the garden for him to sit upon.
"You look tired," he noted.
Swallowing, Arwen shrugged shallowly. "Didn't sleep well." She had woken back in bed that morning, Azriel already gone off on his duties for the day. Last night already felt like a distant memory, one she wasn't keen to speak about, despite Rhysand's prompts over their shared breakfast.
"How are you and Az?"
Arwen looked at him through her lashes as she gathered her meal onto her fork. "Why do you ask?"
He shrugged. "Making conversation. Is there a reason you're hesitant to tell me?"
She decided to be honest. "I'm wondering what you want to hear." His brows lowered into a dark frown. "Perhaps you're hoping to hear things aren't perfect?"
Hazels flashed. "Why would I want to hear that? You think I don't want you happy? My brother happy?"
This was a conversation to tread carefully with but since he had a policy about her being open with him, she expected the same in return, and had told him as such. "You want some sign that things aren't what they look like from the outside. I think you're trying to convince yourself that just because Nesta is your mate doesn't mean you'll get happiness from being with her."
Cassian slouched against the table, looking down at the meal that he stopped eating. "I don't want you to be unhappy."
"I know," she said softly. "I won't lie to you, Az and I are happier than we've been in a long time. It's taken years of work to get to this, but both of us wanted to be here." Arwen let thoughts of her meal go and folded her hands under her chin. "Do you want to be with Nestaâthe person she isâor do you just want to have a mate?"
The way he looked at her, observing every detail of her face, she imagined that he was finding the parts of Nesta to see there. Placing Nesta in Arwen so he could make that decision with his mate staring right back at him. Cassian ran his tongue between his teeth. "The person she is now... No. I can't accept the way she treats this family. The way she treated Feyre, speaks about you and Rhys. Accepting that person would be an insult to the people that do love me."
Arwen smiled grimly, sad for the knowledge that he faced such struggles but happy in her own greediness that he wouldn't accept Nesta's behaviour. "If Nesta is prepared to heal herself and make amends for her wrongs, I'll be the first to forgive her. For your sake. Until then, if your bed is ever feeling a bit too cold and lonely, you're free to join mine."
Cassian hummed lightly, rapping his fingers along the table. Then paused. She chuckled as her words processed on his face for her to see. He leant back in his chair with a new regarding gaze of her, arching a dark brow. "By yours, you meanâ"
"Azriel doesn't mind the company."
"You've discussed this?"
"He was the one to bring it up actually." Arwen cocked her head as he remained silent for another moment. "Am I wrong to assumeâ"
"No." His lips crossed high into his cheeks as he laughed to himself, wiping his hand across that grinning mouth. Whether Rhys had sent him to look after her or he had come by his own will, she didn't mind sitting across from that grin. "Not at all. Just didn't expect the offer."
Shrugging again, Arwen sipped at her tea and turned her gaze to the garden around them, shoving the dark thoughts that were worming their way into her conscious mind further back.