Chapter 11
The town house trembled with a blood-curdling scream.
Rhysand startled awake, flinging the silk sheets from his body and tore down the hall as the screaming continued. He could already hear the commotion downstairs and half-expected to find one of them with their arms cut off. He knew who the screams belonged toâbut they were distant, almost smothered.
Mor and Cassian were yelling at the other, but it wasn't the sound that awoke him. No, they too had their heads snapping around, searching for its source, arguing between themselves. Just as Rhysand's feet hit the last step, the front door flung open with his spymaster's form dangerously alert.
"Where is she?" Rhysand demanded, reaching the sitting room, capturing Mor and Cassian's attention.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Cassian growled back, though the frustration wasn't aimed at the High Lord. Azriel burst into the room after him, shadows unsettled and whipping around him. "We can't find her."
"Can't find..." Rhysand trailed off as he listened to his sister's voice. She called his name, then Azriel's, Cassian's, Mor's and even Amren's. She was thumping against something solid. Trapped. Their heads all turned, ears perked for the sound.
"It's happened again," Azriel realised, quickly sending his shadows off on a hunt.
All Arwen saw was blackness. All except a thin slither of light that crossed against something made of stone, the trail thinner than her smallest finger. Her stomach pressed flat against the earth, hard wooden slats against her back. She couldn't breathe properly, couldn't lift herself or move in any direction. But she had fallen into whatever pit it was.
Cassian's head was tilted up, examining where he stood in relation to the upstairs level. Rhysand and Mor swapped between pressing their ears closer to the walls and floor as they scoured through the sitting room and into the small library that made his office. Azriel lingered behind, using his shadows. They had found her, but now he had to find where they both were. "Her bedroom should be right above us," the warrior stated. She had still been asleep not half an hour ago when he opened her door.
Arwen heard their muffled voices. Rhysand had tapped into her mind, soothing words flowing to her. She was trapped underneath the houses, pinched between the earth and the foundations. Somehow fallen right through the house itself but not through the ground.
'You're going to have to winnow out.'
"No," she said aloud. "NoâI don't know how to, Rhys!"
Rhysand evened his breaths as he crouched on the floor of his office. He could hear her through the floor, felt her panic in his mind. "You're going to have to. There's no way under the house and we can't winnow into that space. Either that or you find a way to make yourself go through things again."
Arwen felt Azriel's shadows. She couldn't see them. She could barely see anything, but they always felt like a soft tickle. "I don't know how to control it," she spat, willing back failing to keep herself calm. "And not every Fae can winnow, and we both know I can't!"
Rhysand rolled his tongue over his lips, looking to the rest of the Inner Circle for ideas. They couldn't destroy the flooring because they would risk hurting her in the process and there was no way for them to get to her from the outside either. With a resigning shake of his head, he said, "You're going to winnow. I'm the most powerful High Lord in historyâ"
"I do not care for your bragging right now," her muffled cry interrupted.
"And there is no way that my sister isn't capable of winnowing. There is no way that I have all this power and you don't have any, so you are going to winnow." Rhysand finished his firm words, holding his breath as he awaited her reply. "Arwen?"
Arwen tapped her forehead to the earth as she tried to focus on gathering enough air as her ribs were pressed flat. She had to winnow. She would rather try that than attempt to make herself move through things again. What if it had only been the Mother's miracle that she hadn't plunged through the earth itself?
Cassian opened his mouth to suggest prying the floor, but Azriel knelt just before the first crack of his voice sounded. "Arwen?"
Her pointed ears perked at the sound of her mate's voice. It was like a call, specifically for her. As though his voice was designed for her ears. Arwen tried to turn her head upwards to hear him better, two deep valleys of skin forming between her eyes as she waited for him to speak more.
Azriel licked his lips, his weight rested forward on the pads of his fingers across the floor. He felt her heartbeat change as soon as he spoke, telling him that she was indeed listening. His eyes skimmed across Rhysand's face who watched him intently. "Two spots, remember? Imagine where you want to be and see yourself standing there. Imagine yourself taking one step forward and moving from where you are now to where you want to be."
Arwen clenched her eyes but did as he instructed and put her shield in place to block out any of her brother's attempts to garner entry again and distract her. She envisioned herself outside, basking in the morning sunlight that she had barely gotten a glimpse of as she awoke that morning before the world turned to a blur of colours.
Rhysand listened for his sister's response, listened for any shuffling. He tapped her mind, but he was locked out of it like an iron gate stood before him. "Arwen?" he called again, voice growing rasp. "Either let me in or talk to me."
Cassian rapped the back of his knuckles against the polished wood floor. "Sweetheart, I've got things to do today. I don't want to spend it digging you out."
Mor rolled her lips between her teeth. "Don't listen to him. Take your time."
"You look like a bunching of idiots talking to the floor."
Four heads snapped around. Arwen sat just before the office door's threshold, covered in a concoction of dust, dirt, and unidentifiable grime, still in her nightgown. She coughed away her dry throat, though it sent a spike of pain through her chest that she had fallen on from the second story of the townhouse.
Mor waved her hand through the air as they migrated towards her, the dirt disappearing and leaving her as pristine as she was leaving the bathtub last night. "Are you alright?" she breathed.
Arwen nodded and brushed aside her cousin's hand. "I'm fine." She huffed something as close to a laugh as she could manage and looked to Rhysand who dutifully knelt at her side. "I winnowed."
He let out a breathless chuckle and nodded. "You did." He examined her body and her mind which was now unlocked for him. The questions that he wanted to ask were answered through it.
Arwen pushed to her feet and practised her breathing, letting her breastbone stretch out the tenderness.
"That's the second time," Rhysand muttered, a hand cupping her elbow but mostly looking to Mor as Cassian filled in the roll of speaking with his sister. "It's going to happen again." Mor didn't answer him, looking between both her cousins. But she warned him with a look to keep his words of fear in control.
"Fuck you," Arwen muttered to Cassian's small grin. She leant her side against her brother's front, somewhat hearing him talk behind her head to Mor. "The only thing you've got to do today is work on your biceps for the mirror."
"An important task," he drawled out, flexing his arm which roused a larger smile from her as she rubbed at her chest. "If I take too many days off, I won't be able to haul you around, you lug."
Tired and still agitated from her rough awakening, Arwen only manage a short, airy laugh of a single exhale. "Are you calling me fat?" she muttered, half closing her eyes, temple against the front of her brother's shoulder.
Cassian drew his lips wider as he said, "Well endowed."
It drew a series of reactions. Arwen coughed another laugh. From just beside him, Azriel's eyes narrowed in a warning just as sharp as his infamous dagger currently lodged at his thigh. Mor offered a sharp huff from the back of her throat as though she had heard the same words too many times and Rhysand tilted his head away from his cousin towards his general. But Cassian was content seeing a flicker of amusement in Arwen's eyes that the looks he received were brushed aside.
When a thick silence lapsed and nobody seemed to know what to do or say anymore, she gave a slight raise of her brows. "Are we having a family breakfast? I can smell food."
Mor gasped. "The eggs!" The sound of her shoes thumped out of the office and down to the kitchen. Cassian laughed but followed her out, likely in concern for his food.
Azriel half-turned to the door but looked back. Arwen waited, watching him intently as a slight frown etched its way onto his face. She wanted him to say somethingâanything, reallyâjust so she could open the chance to speak with him. But his lips never opened. When it was just her and Rhys left in his office, she wiped a hand down her face. "I don't understand what's happening to me."
Rhysand didn't say anything. How was he supposed to tell her that he didn't either? That he had no clue what was happening or how to help? That was his duty, as both High Lord and her brotherâto know what to do. Yet in this, he was chained. "Let's just have breakfast."
They all sat around the dining table, eating from their delicate porcelain plates. The eggs had turned out quite burnt but Mor cooked another batch. Apparently, she had told the twin wraiths she wanted to cook that morning and sent them elsewhere. Arwen tried not to look at Azriel as they opposite at the table, even when he made a few short comments. Nobody spoke of what had just passed and Arwen wasn't sure if she should count is as a blessing, or if it was strange that she was still reeling from what had happened yet everyone else ignored it like it was nothing. The strangest part of breakfast was that Mor and Rhysand were unusually quiet. She guessed by the frequent glances shared between them that they were having a conversation the rest of them were not privy to.
When everybody started to move, Arwen kept her eyes on Azriel. He murmured something about seeing them for dinner and headed towards the front of the townhouse. She followed after him. "Azriel?"
He was a few steps away from the front foyer when the light melodic voice called his name, and like she was a sire and he a sailor, he could not help but turn around. She remained a few paces away, her feet close together and her hands clasped at the front of her gilded nightdress. His shadows had pounded at him when they hunted her down underneath the house and they still trilled around him now like a warning, wanting him not to leave her. But she had her brother, he told himself. She would be fine with him gone.
She ran her tongue over dry lips. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I... I'm not sure how I would have gotten out of that without you." She had winnowed. She had done something which she believed impossible of herself for nearly two hundred years.
He smiled through a sigh. "I'm sure Cassian would have been happy to pull apart the floor if you hadn't managed."
"But he didn't need to," she pointed out. Couldn't he just accept her thanks? Could he not just take her gratitude with open hands? It had been a few years now since they both felt the snapping of the bond, a few years of treading around each other and being careful with their words.
Arwen took a step forward. Azriel's eyes turned down. She didn't take another. He would not even continue to look her in the eyes, wouldn't even stay around after she had fallen through the floors like she was nothing more than the shadows that surrounded him. Despite what calmness she knew she held on her face, Arwen was anything but. It was for her brother's sake that she forced herself to not reveal her panic, to hide her shaking hands between bites of her breakfast. She hoped that Azriel would at least care to stay around.
Crossing her arms across her stomach, Arwen took a step back. Hazel iris lifted back to hers at the sound of her step but held no sign of intent to say anything. Her lips parted, the words dying before they arrived. Snapping them back shut, she turned around and stalked back towards the staircase.
Rhysand wandered into the main hall as the foyer door opened and Arwen strode past him. He reached for her arm, intending a gentle clasp, but she yanked herself away from him and did not even look back as her feet lightly tapped to the upper level. "Arwen?" At no answer, he looked back to the foyer where his spymaster had just disappeared to. Knowing neither would provide him with the answers he sought, the High Lord lifted the point of his elbow to press against the wall next to his head, then pinched the bridge of his nose with the same hand. He would let her rest, he decided, and let his spymaster do whatever the Cauldron he wanted to.