Chapter 12
Feyre strode down the hall in the House of Wind, a velvet emerald dress hugging the cinch of her waist. Her slim fingers stroked through her golden hair, fixing the slight disarray that Rhys had caused when he decided to do revolutions in the sky as they flew up from the town house. In her other hand was a book written on the first war with Hybern. She had longed to know more about her new home's history but didn't wish to ask her mate to relive that part of his life in such detail so she had asked Cassian if he knew of any history books since he had already shown to be fond of books on battle.
She could still hear the chiming laughter of Rhysand and Mor down in the main sitting room as they gathered before an evening meal as a proper family once more. It had been too long since she's had this part of her life back since leaving for the Spring Court.
Feyre knocked on Cassian's door with the bone of her knuckles.
"I swear I'm almost ready!" reverberated from the inside. Chuckling, Feyre opened the door to the General Commander's luxurious bedroom. It was always remarkably neat, though not as neat as Rhysand's. Cassian was indeed almost ready, donning a pair of clean black trousers with numerous pockets and a long-sleeved shirt in a matching shade of black. He double-looked at his High Lady. "Feyre," he greeted. "Am I that late that he sent you down here to get me like a dog?"
"No, Azriel and Amren haven't made an appearance yet," she said with a warm smile. "I actually came to return this." She held up the cover of the book and he made a face of recognition. "It was...informative."
Cassian understood what she meant and offered a tight smile as he took the book. "Let's hope we don't have to relive it again." Her smile tightened in response. He placed the book on a shelf, trailing his finger along the dark, polished wood. "Are your sisters coming tonight?"
Feyre tipped her head knowingly. "No, Nesta won't be there. She's locked herself up with Elain for the night. Elain doesn't want to come for... a few reasons but mainly to avoid Lucien. Lucien isn't coming either though."
"Didn't know we bothered inviting him," he jibed through a grin. Feyre twisted her lips in a playful reprimand of warning. Cassian's shoulders shook as he crossed them over his chest. His eyes drifted down over the shelves that had an open backing, not quite making it a bookshelf though he used it mostly as so. There were other trinkets, mostly odd gifts from hundreds of years' worth of celebrating. When he landed on the small chest near his feet, he looked back up to Feyre. He gestured for her to come closer.
Feyre lifted her brows but wandered further into his room as he crouched down and flipped the metal lock of the chest open. It looked untouched; one of the only things with evidence of dust in the entire chamber. He pulled out a wide piece of rolled parchment, sealed in place by its own permanence of being bent for so long. "You reminded me of this. I'll admit I had to search for a while to remember where I put it butâbut this is a painting of Arwen." Feyre's eyes widened as she flickered them between her companion and the scroll as he unravelled it. "Rhys took any down that had her in them. Stored them somewhere and never told us where but I managed to steal this one before he took it."
It was a simple portrait, with a background the looked like it was somewhere in one of the sitting rooms of the House of Wind or the town house. The first thing that Feyre truly took notice in were the girl's eyes. Such a deep, rich shade of blue that they were a glistening mirror of Rhysand's. Everything about her was; from the eyes, to raven hair, the tanned skin and the slight uplift of her full lips that resembled something between a smirk and a smile. The young female sat formally, with set shoulders and her chin lifted and sitting on her forehead was a golden circlet with a slight point that dipped just above the middle of her dark brows. No doubt an official portrait of some kind. "She's beautiful."
Cassian hummed in something of agreement. Feyre glanced at him again, but his eyes never left the painting. "You're mates with the male version of her so I'm not surprised," he said through a quiet chuckle. His throat bobbed. "Sorry if I sprung this on you. It's just nice to be able to talk about her again. I didn'tâ" he coughed and seemed to reset his shouldersâ "I was still here in my room when Rhys and Azriel found her and by the time I got to the town house when Rhys called for me, she was gone. After that it was like he wanted her gone from his memory and I couldn't bring her up. I visit her grave every few months, but goodbyes don't really seem right when only one person gets to say it."
He finally looked away from the portrait towards his High Lady, wondering if she had any recognition of the way he felt. But Feyre's eyes were locked on the portrait with a frown. "How long ago did you say she died?"
Cassian's lips parted as he swallowed and did the math. "Uh, she was just about to turn two hundred, so about two hundred and fifty years ago. I know that's a long time for mortals, but it barely feels like a few years to me. I keep thinking thatâ"
"I've seen her before."
He blinked, looking back down at the oil painting then at Feyre who examined it with a closer eye. "Did Rhys accidentally show you a memory?" he inquired at her lack of context. "A nightmare?"
Feyre shook her head, though she knew that he had indeed had at least a few night terrors about his sister. She had only claimed a small memory of what he felt, placing it to his sister after he first told Feyre of her existence. But she had never seen Arwen's face through them. "No, but it was through Rhys's eyes. I-I saw her there. Under the Mountain."
Cassian didn't know what to say. "Feyre, she died long before that."
But Feyre shook her head adamantly and pointed to the female's painted smile. "I remember that face. When I died, I was looking at everything through his eyes and I saw that female standing next to him. I thought it was so strange that they looked alike and that she must have been part of his court but I hadn't seen her before then. She was looking at him too, but he never looked at her."
He looked down at the painting, not quite sure what he wanted to believe. There was no doubt that Arwen had a recognisable face. No one else on Prythian had her and her brother's looks. Cassian shook his head. "It's impossible. Rhys would have seen her. She's dead, Feyre. I saw her body and watched it get buried."
"And so was I," she whispered. "Cassian, I was dead and so is she."
He tipped his head from shoulder to shoulder in wild thought, willing enough to entertain with slither of possibility it held. "Did you see anybody else you know to be dead? What about those two faeries that you..."
Feyre swallowed the pit in her throat at the memory but shook her head. "Maybe I'm just making memories up. I don't try to remember much from that time."
Cassian rolled up the parchment with a sigh, placing it back in the chest. "Maybe Rhys has created an imprint of her in his own reality," he said through a long sigh. "If you were seeing through his eyes, maybe you were seeing what his mind created as well."
"Maybe," she echoed, then looked out of the arched glazed window that beheld the setting sun. "Now you're late for dinner."
As he stood back up, pushing his sleeves up the length of his forearms, he pointed a finger at her chest. "So are you. But Rhys can't be mad at you which works in my favour."
Feyre smiled, wiping the memory of what had just passed between them. "No, but Mor can and will be if she's denied dinner on a starving stomach." He made a grousing sound of agreeing realisation and ushered them both out into the hall and set a quick pace towards the dining room.
The welcoming graces of their family adorned their lips again with grins as they sat down around the mahogany wood table. A feast lay before them that Mor was already picking at. Cassian picked up Amren's plate without warning, much to Azriel's chagrin, a habit that the warrior didn't seem keen to let go of. Feyre indulged herself in wine and even Azriel made a few smiles through the night. Cassian even forsook his care for the lack of a certain Archeron sister's presence. She hated to admit that the night was likely going far better than if they attended, no matter how much she wished they would have.
As they relaxed, moved to a sitting room with more glasses of wine in hand, Cassian and Mor started up a game with cards. Azriel and Amren sat next to each other, though with a comfortable distance between them, watching. Feyre sipped at her red wine, turning her gaze to her mate. Rhysand was watching her, a soft but perplexed edge set in his violet eyes. "What's the matter?" she asked, laying a hand on his thigh.
"Nothing," he murmured, sending her a quick uplift of his lips before he looked away and settled into the lounge further. Feyre however, continued to watch him as he had watched her. He leant against the armrest, elbow driving into the soft material as he fingers curled atop of his lips to hide them.
"Rhys," she called again, soft enough not to be heard by the rest of the Inner Circle, but firm enough to take his attention. He laid his hand over hers, glancing in her direction, but settled his eyes somewhere else. Feyre followed them, all the way to Cassian. It took her a few moments to realise that he had caught a glimpse into their thoughts. "Rhys."
"You didn't see her." His voice turned rasped, nothing more than a hoarse whisper. "She wasn't there, and you didn't see her."
Feyre looked back to Cassian, but he was none-the-wiser to their conversation. Instinctually, her gaze turned to Azriel instead. He had been looking somewhere along the floor near her feet, but as if her eyes held weight and he felt them, his own hazel ones lifted. Feyre found that it was hard to tear away from them once they locked. She couldn't help but feel as though he knew as well as Rhys what had been in her mind.
Her mate. Azriel's mate was dead. Did he want to forget about her too, or was he stuck in a world of pained silence at the order of his High Lord?
Feyre took her mate's hand in a tighter clutch for the rest of the night and kept her mind occupied with other thoughts so she would not send anything through their linked souls. But the harm had been done. They retired early in the night, returning alone to the town house and crawled their way into the large bed in their now shared room. Feyre laid her head on his chest, the thrumming of his heart leading the pattern of her own. He made idle stroked along her bare spine as though he was counting each small bone along it. He stared off to the other side of the bedchamber, lost in his thoughts.
Feyre bit her lips before speaking. "She was beautiful," she said, echoing what she had said earlier. She wasn't looking at his face as she spoke but still could read every response his body produced to her voice. The stroking of her back never stopped. "So much like you."
"I wish there was more for you to say about her."
She lifted her head, brows burrowing but realised that he wasn't throwing a jab at her. He said it to himself. Beauty is what one could see from a painting, but little else. And a painting is all she knew besides a few pieces from Cassian. Yet Rhysand wasn't willing to offer that something more. "Why do you want to forget her?" she whispered.
"Because I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember her." Rhysand looked down at his mater who still had her head lifted partially off his chess. "I tried to use my own powers to wipe her from my memory but... It doesn't work like that. I can't change my own mind just like we can't bite off our own fingers." His own admission of the extent he had gone to was sickening to be said aloud. "And I don't trust another daemati to do it."
Feyre lifted herself higher, resting on the points of her elbows. "She was your sister, Rhys. Azriel's mate."
"Haven't you ever wished to erase a part of your life?" Rhysand stretched his jaw and nestled further into his pillow. "You saw what I was willing to become, what I was willing to do Under the Mountain to protect my family and this city. I would have done all that just to keep her alone safe. Remembering her is remembering that I didn't. That I didn't go to those lengths to protect her."
It was shame, in his voice that she recognised. It was buried deep, roots clawed into his mind like a weed. 'I don't think he wants that help, Feyre,' Cassian had said. 'I think he wants to continue hating himself over it.'
"Goodnight darling."
Feyre closed her eyes as Rhysand leant down to kiss her forehead, the soft glow of the candlelit blowing out. She hadn't wanted to end the conversation there, but it was clear as the night sky that it was. So she nestled back against him, a smile of contentment curling on her lips as she fell asleep at his side.