Chapter 111: Chapter 111

Chapter 111

"You didn't tell me."

Arwen folded her arms, taking the blow of Cassian's accusation. Azriel sat on the bed somewhere behind her, silent and brooding. She had expected them to be cheering at her excellent performance, relieved to know that she had never once been in danger. But no. "It was better that you didn't know."

Cassian didn't pause in his pacing. "Better? I thought they were fucking torturing you, Arwen. That I was being forced to stand there and Rhys was letting it happen all for a show. Why couldn't I have known, even just for the peace of mind?"

"Because they had a daemati," she told him—them both. "My mental shields are strong enough when I'm prepared. Rhys and I thought the risk of too many of us knowing would weaken the plan. Besides, it kept your reactions natural. They believed it."

"What if they didn't? What if they realised that you were tricking them and attacked you?"

"Then I know you would have defended me. Rhysand was never in danger either. He let that daemati into his head and caged him in. My head was protected and I had all of you there around me. There was not a single moment that I didn't feel safe."

"You weren't safe," Cassian bellowed, throwing out an arm. "That's my entire point. I thought you were Rhys. If I thought you were being hurt, or Rhys should I say, I would have left you to protect the wrong person."

"Good!" Heat spilled into her cheeks. "Our High Lord should be our priority. It is who we are sworn to protect and serve. I don't know what oath you made to him about me but it was foolish. I am an emissary. I am expendable. My brother and this court are your duty, not me."

Cassian halted, a hand pressing to his chest. "Expendable? You are Rhy's priority therefore you are mine. Just as Feyre is. There is no way in flaming Hell that you are expendable, Arwen."

Even Azriel shot her a cold, unwavering glare.

Arwen's lip curled to her teeth. "I don't see you in Feyre's chambers screaming even though she knew about the plan. Or at Rhys. Why me? Why stand here and yell at me even though I was just doing my own duty?"

"Because you should have told me, Arwen!" She flinched at the volume. "It's a damn habit you have—letting people in only when it benefits you. What about me and what I need from you?"

Her mouth fell agape. She looked back at Azriel, hoping foolishly that he would come to her defence but he sat silent, staring at the floor. "So now I'm too selfish," she murmured. "Make up your mind Cassian because on one day you accuse me of being so selfless that it was doing me harm to now I don't think about you at all. I told you to trust me and it is not my fault that you didn't."

He grappled at the air between them, his fingers clenching and she was sure if he wasn't wearing leather gauntlets she'd be able to see the bones of his knuckles. "You're infuriating."

"You are being unfair!" she yelled. "How can you be upset at me when I was doing exactly as my High Lord asked? If I had gone against him then I would be scorned for that as well. Do you not see the corner you are putting me in?"

He scoffed and dropped his hand. "You are not in a corner. All you had to do was tell me what the plan was. Tell Azriel. That was all and it would have been fine."

"At the expense of going against my brother's wishes? I am not you, Cassian. I know my place and my loyalty."

The fiery rage that grew on his face at that accusation—that he was disloyal to his High Lord and Lady—struck fast. Her own flame of fury wavered as he took three storming steps towards her. Her bare feet skimmed across the cold ground as she stumbled an equal amount of steps back, a trill of true fear going through her as his figure loomed over her, her back knocking against the bedpost. For a moment, she was subject to what others saw him as—Lord of Bloodshed. She had never truly appreciated just how terrifying he could be.

She knew she had pushed him over the edge and regretted every word. They were spoken under a blade of anger she no longer wanted to wield at him.

Cassian stopped. That rage disappeared within a blink.

Arwen held herself steady, but gripped the post of the bed behind her as if it might sheild her.

He looked at her hand, looked at her face, then at Azriel who had risen to his feet. Cassian seemed to gather himself, as if part of him had dispersed into the air. "I made an oath to your brother, that you would be my priority because he knew there may be a day where it came down between protecting one of us or his court and he didn't trust himself. He needed to know that we would take care of each other so he could do his own duty. I thought today might be one of those days so I was loyal, and I was prepared to lay my life down for that loyalty. For you. You made me believe I betrayed my oath."

Arwen's lip trembled. She bit it. "Get out." His face twitched. "Get out. Get out." The door banged open against the wall with a touch of her magic. "I swear on the gods Cassian if you don't—" Cassian turned his broad back on her and walked out, slamming the door shut behind him. She gave a shuddering breath, bowing her head for a moment before looking to Azriel. "Do you agree with him?"

Azriel stared at the door before looking at her. "Yes."

She panted, hands on her hips. "I assume I won't have to threaten you to leave."

"No."

Her eyes traced his movement from one side of her room to the door. Civilly, as if the anger she felt was beyond him, he opened the door and quietly closed it behind him. It infuriated her even more.

Arwen paced, battling tears.

She was alone. Their backs had turned on her, even if it were her own fault, and they left.

Her shaking fingers went to her lips, her teeth gnawing on their skin. Her breathing fastened, jagged and empty. True loneliness that she had begun to forget seeped back in. Forget how empty the world felt, how dark the shadows were, how trapped you begin to feel in your own mind. Her fingers moved from her mouth, joining her other hand in threading through her hair, pulling it back from her face. She made a sound, something between a whimper and a cry.

They were gone. They were gone—and weren't coming back—she was alone—there was no one—Azriel left—Cassian left—alone. Oh gods, she was alone again.

Black strands of hair were still entangled between her fingers when she wrenched them out. Arwen found herself at the bedside table where the sketchbook she had been working on lay. Inside where the nearly twenty complete drawings she had been working on for Azriel's birthday. Drawings of her favourite memories of him.

Picking it up, she commanded the fireplace to become alight. Arwen tossed the entire thing into the flames. She cried in time with the rise of the fire which greedily swallowed at the parchment. The leather casing shrivelled, resisting. Feverishly, her fingers went through the loop of her thin, gold-chained bracelet. The one with the small amethyst that Cassian had given her for Winter Solstice. She pulled so hard that the clasp broke.

That too went into the fire.

She had never destroyed a gift before. Never destroyed something given to her.

It choked her.

Stumbling back, away from the fire and scent of burning leather, Arwen covered her mouth but found that it only worsened her ability to breathe. She pressed a hand to her stomach instead which seized and released in time in time with her aching chest. It was hot. So damn hot. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think.

The world began to blur and tip. Arwen stumbled across her room, gripping and barging into furniture to guide her way until she reached the bathroom.

Her knees thudded against the cold tiles as she reached across the curled lip of the bath and grasped the gold faucet taps. She turned on the tap, the cold water pouring out unceremoniously fast. The tears on her cheeks made her skin itch but when she wiped them clean, more fell. Still on her knees, Arwen twisted her arms around for the back of her dress as the bath filled, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not get a grasping on the buttons that kept it latched shut.

She tried to strangle the scream in her throat, but it came.

The water hadn't reached halfway when she climbed into the bath. It flooded over her legs, soaking the skirt of her dress, weighing it down. She cried at it to pour faster, to cover her so she could feel it all around her. So she could feel something. Finally, it reached her chest, small lapping waves overflowing onto the tiles below.

Arwen gripped the edges of the bath, attempting to contain her breathing enough to go under but it was a futile effort. Her cheeks felt hot and splotchy red despite the water being cold. Hair floated around her shoulders in black tendrils. They reminded her of shadows. Of emptiness.

She forced herself under.

For a moment she thought she could do it—stay under there. But a moment passed and she could not. Her lungs fought for more air that they had not been getting and in its place, got water. Arwen lurched back up, choking and spluttering as water bubbled back past her lips, stinging the back of her throat and lungs.

Unable to find solace in the only thing that could offer it to her, she screamed.

The screams lasted mere seconds at a time, each one interrupted by another series of hoarse pants. Her throat burned but she didn't care. The world beyond her modest room disappeared, sucked into a void and leaving her as the only thing left.

A door slammed against the wall in her bedchamber.

Through the bathroom door she had left open, she caught sight of a black blur that she couldn't distinguish until she could see the smears of violet on the other side of her tears looking at her. He dropped to his knees in front of the tub. Despite feeling so unbearably hot, Arwen shivered as her screams fell back to uncontrollable cries.

The water splashed over the edge as Rhysand dug both his arms into the water. They hooked around her and she was lifted from her little cage of water.  She fell into the wet puddle of his lap, her dress clinging to her frame in a horrid way. A slight metallic sound and the quietening of the water reminded her that she had never turned the taps off.

Rhysand was soaked. Or rather, she was soaking him. But he held her and she clawed at him. Bile rose in her throat from her inability to control her own body.

She wasn't alone.

How could she have forgotten?

Her ragged breathing fell to pants and her cries to sobs. He didn't let her pull away, not until she had fallen silent altogether. She burrowed her head back into his neck and locked away the rest of the world.

A/N Okay, I'm just wanna kinda add this part because we all know that the end of the story is very near and it's kinda like - why is there still all this suffering?

Trauma healing isn't linear, it isn't straightforward and it's not something that ends once you find true love and rejoin with family. It can take years, decades, an entire lifetime to heal, or sometimes you can't.

I can promise a happy ending for this story and I know this is (fan)fiction, but after the events that Arwen had gone through, I think it's important to display that even though she has everything that one could consider a 'perfect' life, it doesn't eradicate her experiences. These are things that even after the story officially ends, she would still be working through for the rest of her life.

Her happy ending will be a positive projection, not a conclusion.