Chapter 81
Rhysand sat in front of the fire in the town house's sitting room. Feyre gripped his arm. "Helion needs a week to..." He sighed and shook his head. "...Figure the spell out. If it's even possible."
"How is she taking it?" Mor quietly asked, peering up towards the ceiling in the direction of Arwen's bedchamber where she had taken off to the moment they got home. Since there was no need to remain at the Day Court, Rhysand had winnowed them home the moment they packed their things. Azriel had returned to the House of Wind.
"Hasn't spoken a word." Rhysand looked at Cassian. "I was hoping you might try and speak with her. Tomorrow. See where her thoughts are at." Cassian nodded gravely. A coin of decision had been in Rhysand's head since sitting in that room with Helion. It flipped back and forth, like a gambler playing with his winnings. One way and then the next. Yet it wasn't his decision to make. It certainly felt like it rested on his shoulders.
Amren inspected her thumbnail. "How long do we have to make the decision?"
"Does she have to make," Cassian snarled in correction.
The once-demon (still slightly demon) female arched a dark brow, the dull silver eyes still sharper than ever. "You think she's in the position to make it?" Rhysand fell under the glare next. "She's not well, Rhysand."
Cassian stared ahead, speaking into the rim of his glass tankard as he muttered, "That's a lot of bullshit for a small mouth. She is sick, not mindless. I want her to stay but I'm not going to chain her down."
At the sight of Amren's indeed small mouth snapping open, it was Feyre that cut through. "If you two are going to fight, you better leave this house." Rhysand's lips twitched into what might have been a smile at another time. He could listen to her telling them off any day. "It will be Arwen's decision."
Rhysand nodded in confirmation. "The answer is weeks. Maybe two months if her body isn't pushed. I don't want any of you pressing on her. This... This is a decision she needs to make. That's an order."
He knew better than any of them in her once unwavering comfort in the thought of having a life after this one. Telling him at Starfall that she would be one of them one day, shining over their world. It had kept hope in her through dark times. He had gotten through his own times of darkness believing that he would reunite with his family in death. To take that choice away from her would be cruel. And Rhysand has had enough of making the wrong decisions. Enough of placing her fate in his hands.
Yet, the idea of letting her go again was almost too unbearable to even imagine.
Cassian, Mor and Amren each took their leave. Rhysand buried his face into his hands, elbows driving divots into his thighs. Feyre's hand ran down his back, a soothing act but it did little to help. "Azriel was right."
Her soft brows moved together. "About what?"
He locked his fingers together, resting his jaw on weaved thumbs. "About it being my fault." His heel bounced against the ground.
"You know it's not true. Fault implies intent. You and I both know, and Azriel knows, that you would never intend anything to happen to her." Feyre leant forward, searching for his gaze back but he couldn't offer it. "Nobody could have known this would happen."
"I was supposed to meet them." His voice croaked but he forced himself to continue. "I was supposed to meet Arwen and my mother halfway to the camp. I didn't because I was busy and thought what I was doing was more important. It cost my mother her life and my sister her wings."
"You were betrayed."
"Arwen told me that she wasn't feeling well. More than once." Rhysand couldn't make out the tongues of flame anymore, his sight tainted by tears that he fought against falling. "I ignored her and she died."
"And you brought her back. Not only did you give her a second chance at life, but you also gave her back to this family. I can see how happy it makes you to have her around."
He looked at Feyre, hoping he wouldn't see her disappointment in him that he felt in himself. "I don't think she ever wanted to come back. She doesn't remember, but I do. After I guided Amren back, I saw her. I walked toward her and she stepped away from me. I offered my hand, but she wouldn't take it. So I grabbed her. I forced her to follow me."
The confession physically hurt him to say aloud. Until now, it had been a dark secret he stored at the back of his mind, ever since that day he pulled her out of death. He spent hours convincing himself that what he saw was not what he perceived. That she was just confused. Perhaps alarmed that he had died. That she didn't want to admit that he was there with her.
"I forced her back here only for her to..." He couldn't finish his sentence, tears trickling down his cheeks as he let out a hoarse sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. The constriction in his chest was painful. "Part of me thinks I should just let her go. That it's the Mother or the Cauldron telling me that I can't fight against it. But another part of me thinks it's a test-that I have to fight for her this time. That I will do everything I can to keep her with us and not fail her. But what if keeping her here is failing her?"
Feyre kissed his cheek. "This is not a test, and it is not your decision to be burdened with. It is nobody's burden. She will decide because it will be what she wants."
~
Cassian squeezed Feyre's shoulder as he passed her into the town house. It was quiet, but that wasn't highly unusual for the late morning. He gave Rhysand a tight, forlorn smile as the High Lord exited one of the small study rooms and into the main hall. Rhysand returned one just as grim. "She up?"
"Sleeping," Rhysand answered, nodding in the direction of the sitting room. "I can call for you when she wakes."
"I've cleared my day anyway," Cassian said, folding his arms to his chest. Looking around, he noted the lack of presence. "Azriel isn't here?" He hadn't seen his brother in the House of Wind, but he could just be hiding away in his room. Cassian hadn't bothered looking.
Rhysand sighed with a bitter, empty laugh. "I'm not bothering to try and figure it out."
Cassian sighed with him and ventured into the sitting room. Arwen was tucked into the main lounge, bundled in a thick, grey blanket. He knelt by the edge, reaching to curl a strand of hair away from her face. Only to hit solid air.
His nose flared. "A shield?" he demanded under his breath.
Rhysand, who trailed him into the room, said in a soft voice, "Only while she's sleeping. It's just... a precaution."
Cassian glanced around the room as if to ask, against what? But his brother, whose throat bobbed at the look, didn't seem to have an answer either. But he could understand it. Cassian had hardly gotten any sleep through the night, spending most of it talking with Mor. Hearing what Rhysand told them yesterday... It was a blow to a still raw wound. It felt like they had just gotten her back, that the last two hundred and fifty years were spent waiting for her, even if they didn't know it at the time. He had been trying so damn hard to nurse her back to the person he once knew, only to be told her fate was beyond his control.
Not completely out of control, he thought. He still had one hand in it.
Sitting in the nearby armchair, he occupied his time talking with Feyre about the developments along the Sidra. He remembered Rhysand showing him the land he had bought his mate. "The rubble too?" he had asked, earning a smack on the upside of his head. Feyre was ecstatic, and he guessed she would talk for days about her plans for the estate if he let her.
Arwen stirred. Feyre rose from her chair, brushing her hands on the light blue dress she wore and gave Cassian and Arwen the room. Taking a long draw of air, he too rose to his feet and crossed the small section of the room to crouch before her. Arwen woke herself, a frown carving into her forehead. Her eyes found him and spent the next moments just examining Cassian. He could read the signs on her-the weariness in the lines between her brows, the metaphorical heaviness. A nightmare.
She pushed herself up, using her knuckles to wipe at her eyes.
"Want to talk about it?" he asked her. She shook her head. He tilted his. "Want something to eat? Cerridwen is around I think. You know she makes a mean cob loaf." He didn't even get a physical answer this time. Arwen just stared at the ground to the side, stewing in what he knew were bleak thoughts. He hoisted himself to height, extending a hand. "Let's take a walk, princess. I think-"
Just as his hand brushed her arm, Arwen thwacked it away. "Don't touch me."
He dropped again. "Arwen, I'm not asking you to choose anything. Just talk. Talk with me. Tell me what you're feeling." Cassian offered his hand again.
Her hair danced around her pale face with the second shaking of her head which he was sure was hard enough to hurt her neck. "I don't wan... I don't want to," she panted out, cowering away from the hand that he inched forward again. She stared down at it like it was a blade about to pierce her. "Don't. Don't. Please don't."
It broke a piece of him to see her like this again. When just days ago they had been laughing. Laughing and dancing. Now she was begging him not to touch her.
"I can't," she cried softly, pushing with her heels into the cushioning, back pressing into the spine of the lounge. Her lashes clumped at the wetness of her tears that glistened.
"Why not?" he asked her, straining to keep his voice steady for her sake. "Tell me why we can't talk."
"I can't," she repeated, but the words seemed more purposeful this time.
Rhysand's head of dark hair peeked over the back of the lounge from where he had entered through the archway. Cassian made a subtle gesture for him to stay put.
'Don't push her,' Rhysand sent him.
'She might take better to you asking.'
Rhysand didn't answer, retreating somewhere else in the town house. Cassian ignored the lingering whisper in his mind that told him to go after his brother. He spent the next few minutes calming Arwen down, rescinding his offer to talk and instead offering to bring the books down from the House of Wind that she had left up there.
Once she settled, curling back up in her blanket and turning her gaze to the nearest window where she could watch a light snowfall, Cassian hunted his brother down. Rhysand had returned to his office, working about at a stack of parchment.
"Distracting yourself?" he asked, flicking a piece of parchment from where it hung over the lip of the desk.
"Working," Rhysand corrected.
Cassian slumped into the opposite seat with a short grunt. He decided the repeat what had already been said. "Why don't you talk to her? I know she trusts me, but you're her brother. You've always been above us all to her. Hell, she stood between you and her mate to protect you."
"Ex-mate," Rhysand muttered, forgetting his work. By the sight of his dishevelled hair, Cassian knew Rhys had run his hands through it one too many times. And since that pile of paperwork had been on his desk since last week, he could also guess that his brother had barely touched it. "I'm sorry-that I'm asking you to do it. I can't..." Rhysand tightened his lips and recomposed his shoulders. "I'm afraid that if it try, she'll push me away. I'm already losing her as it is."
Cassian rubbed at his jaw and thought for a moment. "Her reaction..." He didn't know how to begin-didn't know what exactly he wanted to say. "She wasn't just upset, or confused and scared. Arwen was terrified, Rhys.
Rhysand inspected a knot in the polished wood of his desk. "I don't think we can blame her for that."
"Course not. But it still leaves the question; what exactly is terrifying her? If she's scared of death, then doesn't have to choose it and she knows that."
Rhysand didn't have an answer.