Chapter 91
Arwen had her head laid on Azriel's bare stomach, looking past his smooth skin to the window that brought in the morning light. She mutely traced the tattoo that curved from his back over the bone of his hip. It was a dream.
Or at least, that is what it felt like. The world beyond her window and door did not exist. If she could lay there forever, it was a temptation Arwen didn't think she could resist. Azriel had long ago hooked a leg around hers, as if making their joining permanent. He made lazed trails at the low of her back where his hand naturally fell. His wings were comfortably situated and supported between a mess of pillows and the quilted headboard.
But it wasn't a dream.
"Must you go?" she asked. "Will I sound like a child if I cry for you not to?"
His hand smoothed over her hip. "I must," he said softly. "I will be back in two weeks. It was meant to be three, but I'm a skilled negotiator."
She huffed but it did make her feel better that he had fought for that quicker return. Rolling onto her back, Arwen lodged her head in the space between his bicep and ribs, and looked up at him through her lashes, pouting.
"I don't want to leave you," he said. "But Rhys needs me to make sure Beron isn't forming plans to breach the human lands. My plants haven't been able to receive any solid information."
"That is a pity." She looked towards the window again. It felt like they were now taking back stolen time. So many years that they could have had together, taken away by their own stupidity and fate. "Bring me a souvenir, will you?"
Azriel chuckled. "What is it that you want?"
"Beron's head."
The laughter grew and Arwen smiled at the sound. "How about some fire lilies instead?"
"Beron will have your head if he finds you snooping around his gardens." Fire lilies, a treasure of the Autumn Court, only grew within the High Lord's privately tended garden, overlooked by the pavilion leading to his personal wing. "I would rather have that than flowers."
"You trust me to sneak around his court undetected, as I have done so many times over the centuries, but do not trust me to pick you some flowers?" he inquired, toying with a thick strand of her hair. "It is confusing."
"What you do for this court's greater good and favours for me are very different."
Azriel hummed quietly, his thumb tracking down the outer side of her face until he reached her chin, pushing it so she looked back towards him. "I will bring you fire lilies." Not arguing, she settled into his hold for the hour that they had left together. In the end, she fell into a light sleep and when she awoke at high sun, he was gone.
Arwen lamented for some time, burying her nose into the sheets where he had laid through the night. After not having him for so long, letting him go again felt so wrong. Smiling, she felt for the strength of the mating bond, feeling his soft caress through it, acknowledging her as she acknowledged him. It might have been a phantom sensation with how light and distant it felt, but she was certain it was him.
Finally leaving her bed, she pulled on loose pants and a matching top. Expecting Feyre down sometime soon, she may as well spend her late morning preparing an assortment of bite-sized food to graze on. Arwen danced on her toes with a lightness that she had not experienced in many years, humming as she milled about the kitchen.
The front door opened not long after she set down the finished plate. She had been nibbling on cheese, contemplating the new blooms in the garden and which would be most interesting to draw. Elain had gone to spend the day in town.
"Feyre," Arwen greeted with a kind smile as she moved into the hall. The High Lady smiled back, her lips soft and delicate. But Arwen's faded when not only Amren appeared behind her, but Rhysand and Cassian. She hadn't seen her brother since he pried into her mind. Dug himself behind her stone walls of defence.
In the passing days, she couldn't decide how to feel about it. Whether he did so believing it was for her own good, or because he couldn't handle not knowing something. That need for control propelled him as a High Lord, but it was also one of his most tainted traits.
And he hadn't come alone. Arwen felt her chest tighten in an echo of their last conversation-if it could be called that. How entrapped she had felt with them all surrounding her.
"We're sorry." The broken, hoarse voice of her brother. He had been in her mind, reading her internal reaction. Pain shone in his eyes. "I'm sorry."
They stood for another few moments in silence, the air so thick she could feel it clinging to her neck. Until, "Why don't we sit down," Feyre prompted. Arwen gave a small nod and made her way back to the kitchen to grab the silver platter tray and brought it into the sitting room.
Placing it on the lowered table between the arranged seats, Arwen took the unoccupied armchair. Rhysand sat closest on the end of the long lounge, rubbing his hands between his knees, Feyre to his side. Cassian took the armchair opposing Arwen's, unnaturally silent, his gaze ever watchful. Amren took to leaning against the mantle of the unlit fireplace, arms neatly folded.
"You should have told us," Amren said. "It's important we understand."
"For what?" Arwen shot back in a small whisper. "What would having you understand done?"
"We would have understood why you were so withdrawn," Cassian quickly supplied. "I had to spend every day worrying that if I said something wrong it would send you back into a hole we barely just got you out of."
Her hands fisted in her lap. "I wanted to forget. I didn't want to spend my days like this-answering questions and seeing it in your faces. I wanted it behind me."
He nearly rose from his seat, staring at her from across the lowered table, incredulous. "You say that like it was a few weeks. It was two hundred and fifty years of your life."
"I wasn't exactly alive-"
"No, you were dead! Dead but stuck watching us all and-"
Amren's voice cut over the top of his. "Cassian." Arwen realised that was why she had been brought; to keep this from escalating from what it had before. Cassian scowled but silenced.
"We never forgot you." She almost couldn't bring herself to look at Rhys, but Arwen she did. "I tried to. I couldn't stand seeing your portrait. Your things. Knowing it was my fault."
Tears beaded on her lashes, the familiar sting already at her throat. "You broke into my mind."
Rhysand ducked his hands into his palms, threading his fingers through his cropped hair before lifting it once more in a state of dishevel. "I thought it was going to be my fault again if I did nothing. If I didn't find out what you were trying to hide. I thought I was going to lose you again, Arwen."
Her head shook from side to side, her lip trembling. "I was never gone. I have been with you every single day." Rhysand hid his mouth behind interlaced fingers as he closed his eyes at her words. "It felt wrong," she confessed, "to be in this world when you are supposed to be dead. I-It still does. Like I've somehow cheated death."
"The scars," Cassian said. Arwen looked at him. "They're from the tether? The thing that kept you tied to Rhys."
She rubbed at them. "From when I tested it, yes," she admitted, hating how weak her own voice was. Before they could ask, their expressions brimming with question, she told them. "I never felt anything. No pain. Hunger. I never slept. " Arwen couldn't identify which scar was which behind the mess of it all. "I thought if I could stretch it far enough it would snap. It never did. Not until Rhys died too."
Cassian muttered a curse indistinguishable to her ears and rubbed the back of his neck. Arwen glanced at Amren, in search of her stoic temperament that would soothe her. Act as an anchor. Fortunately, it was there.
"You went Under the Mountain with him."
Amren glared at Cassian once more.
Arwen bowed her head, a knot growing in her throat, making breathing nearly impossible. "I don't want to talk about it." When she was young, some people would tell her that bad memories would fade. That in days, weeks, or years, they became a mess that you could barely recall-a defence the mind makes to protect you. But they were lying. Every single day of her time Under the Mountain was chiselled into her memory, and it took only a single word or thought for them to be brought to her consciousness. "I can't talk about that."
"Arwen." Cassian growled her name in a soft warning.
Rhys cast a hard look in his brother's direction. "Don't," he said in the same tone. "Don't make her talk." The only good thing about their shared experience-he knew what she saw, knew what it felt like to carry those invisible scars.
"You know what it does to you, Rhys," Cassian argued. "When you don't let these things heal."
Gathering the small fire in her chest, Arwen said, "I don't see you up in Rhys's business every day. Why do I have to share it? Why do I have to speak about it when he does not?"
"Because he didn't pretend it never happened!" Amren sent another, heavier scowl at Cassian's rising volume. Easing the flex in his jaw, he leant deeper into the seat as if forcing himself to relax, fingers flexing around the soft leather arms. "We might not know everything that happened in those fifty years, but I understand enough and Rhys tells us things when he's ready."
Arwen bent forward, a hand to her chest. "I'm not ready!" she cried. "And I never pretended anything. I omitted the truth but I have never pretended it never happened. Not to myself. I was tethered to Rhys. If you understand what happened to him, then you understand what happened to me."
"It's not the same," Cassian breathed. "You were dead, Arwen-"
"I've gathered as much."
"-And you cannot pretend!"
She launched from the chair, her spine rigid and tall like the bones were welded as she stood, panting. Cassian did not wither and retreat under her glare. Rhys had shifted weight onto his feet but had yet to rise, waiting to see the next move before he played his own. Feyre and Amren remained silent on the sidelines, merely spectators to a conversation neither of them belonged to.
"I know, trust me Arwen, I know what it feels like to not be able to do something." They stared at each other across the lowered table, his words softer than before, but his hazel eyes were like fire and her cheeks were the land they burnt. "It wrecks you in a completely different way."
A choked sound broke from her lips, cutting through the thick silence. Her hand shot to her mouth, fingers grazing the wetness of her cheeks from the tears she had yet to notice. Like Cassian's words were a catalyst, piece by piece, the memories wrecked through her. Cassian looked down at the sound, licking his lips.
Within a heartbeat of the second sob, Rhys stood before her and she buried herself in his arms. "I tried, Rhys," she croaked. "I tried, I tried, I tried." Her voice mingled with her cries, tears dripping off her cheeks. Each syllable became painful, restrained by the swollen ache in her throat. The anger began to burn, and she pulled back enough to smack his fist into his chest. "You drank that gods-damned wine. I had to watch her hurt you."
Her entire body trembled. He carefully lowered the both to the floor, holding her arms so she didn't fall over completely in the hysteria that racked through her. "I wanted to hurt her back-to make her stop but I couldn't. Sh-she tortured you and I did nothing." Her grip on him tightened in an echo of that agony she wanted to inflict. "When you were alone I coul-couldn't do anything to help."
It felt like a dagger had pierced her chest. Arwen clenched her eyes, wheezing through clenched teeth as she bowed forward into him, wailing so loud the entire street must have heard her.
Then, the sound stopped. Her chest heaved as it tried to keep up, but no sound came with the movement of her cries and despite the tightness, her lungs felt entirely empty. Arwen forced herself to breathe, but she could think-couldn't figure out what was happening to her. Hot panic surged through her, remembering the way she couldn't breathe when she had died. Clawing her nails into her brother's shoulders, she gasped out, "I c...I can't br-I can't br...breathe."
But he didn't panic the way she wanted him to, the way she knew he should be when someone suddenly found themselves unable to get any air. Rhys simply brought her closer until her head was lodged over his shoulder. She repeated her terrified cry but he only soothed a hand over her back, another through her hair. "Count with me," he said. "One...Two...Three...Four..."
Out of instinct, she carried on the count with him in her head, sealing her eyes shut to focus. When she had reached twenty, the tightness began to unwind and she opened her eyes. The world was swallowed by plains of rolling green. She could hear the trickle of a soft creek nearby, the light melody of a songbird. Yet she could still smell the townhouse, could still feel the itch of the rug on the fronts of her bent feet. It was in her mind. Not real.
Still, she kept her eyes open to watch the soft sway of the tree and the flock of ravens that crowed from within them.