Chapter Text
Feyre gasped as she violently woke, thrashing away the silken sheets as she cringed against the bright morning light streaming through the window. It took her mind more than a moment to recollect itself.
Feyre’s mind treaded like sludge, struggling to operate through the disorienting images. Everything was hazy; she couldn’t decipher if she was recalling a nightmare or reality. Through the mountain of fog, she grasped onto the whisper of a memory—she had been clutching onto the broken pieces of the Cauldron, Rhys holding tightly behind her as they desperately slung all of their magic into forging it anew. But Rhys had given too much and he was… Rhys was…
Everything rushed back to her like the crack of a whip, cutting through the dense cloud in her mind. A dry sob shuddered through her as she was inundated with memories—recalling the way Rhys had collapsed behind her, the way she’d scrambled to tug at the only remaining scrap of his life essence held together by their mating bond. She’d felt him, felt her body carrying his soul the way he had Under the Mountain. She was going to force the other High Lords to give him back his life, even if it meant going into each of their minds to make them do it but then… she couldn’t remember what had happened after that. Fuck , she couldn’t even remember if Rhys was alive .
Feyre tried to tug at the mating bond, tried to scream down it for any sliver of life. She was met with nothing, not the black adamant shields, not even a mute thread for her to grip helplessly onto. Where there was once a mating bond there was now nothing, an entire essence of her very being cleaved away.
She could not help the scream of agony that tore out of her, her vision consumed by that single image of clarity—her mate crumpled, unmoving. The world felt raw. She’d expected a world without Rhysand to feel drab and dull, the colors blurred and muted. Instead everything was too overwhelming, too sharp, like the moment she’d first seen the sun the first time after leaving the Mountain. Just living, just sitting in this bed and opening her eyes felt like salt water splashing against an open wound.
My mate... , was the only thought her brain could grasp, the word clanging through that empty part of her being in a cruel torment. My mate, my mate, my mate.
He was gone and Feyre felt that the truth of it might very well destroy her.
Distantly, Feyre heard footsteps hurriedly approaching, most likely in response to her scream. She hoped whoever they’d belonged to was wise enough to give her the space a grieving mate was owed. Feyre wasn’t sure if she was even capable of standing, let alone getting out of bed or using her voice. But maybe… maybe they’d have answers for what happened.
For the first time since waking, Feyre lifted her head and took in her surroundings. She’d assumed she was in the Night Court, but instead she sat in the middle of a large, spacious room. Sunlight flitted in through the window, torn pastel curtains drifting gently on a breeze that carried the scent of flower blossoms. Feyre went still with recognition as the lock on the door clicked.
There was a screech and a thud, snapping Feyre’s attention to the familiar faerie, who had collapsed in a heap on the floor next to a mess of a braided-curtain rope that had been rigged to snap at any intruders. An unnerving sense of deja vu licked the back of Feyre’s mind, but she was too distracted by her grief and the appearance of her friend, who should be in Summer court with her nephews. More curiously, she was still wearing her bird mask and was glamoured to look High Fae.
“Alis!?” Feyre exclaimed in surprise.
Alis stood up, hissing as she brushed off her apron. She frowned at the rope dangling from the light fixture.
“What in the bottomless depths of the Cauldron is this!?” she demanded.
“What are you doing here?” Feyre half whispered, her voice hoarse. But she was able to speak against the raging turmoil inside her, and that in itself felt like a miracle.
Alis looked Feyre over from head to toe, and if she felt any pity for the anguish that must have been clearly written on Feyre’s face, she didn’t show it. “Was screaming to get my attention part of your foolish trap? You think a bit of rope snapping in my face will keep me from breaking your bones?” Feyre blinked in surprise. “You think that will do anything against one of us?”
One of us ? Feyre furrowed her brows in confusion at Alis using such exclusionary language, but there were more pressing issues at hand. “Alis, what happened? Why am I here? Where’s Rhys ?” her voice cracked painfully on his name, as if she were swallowing daggers just by uttering it.
Confusion flashed across Alis’s expression, before quickly being covered up by a scowl, her sharp brown eyes narrowed. “You are here because my Master is merciful and gave his word that you could live here. And as for that name,” she pitched her voice lower, “I do not know where you learned it, but I would not speak it around here.” Alis turned dismissively, regarding the hanging bit of rope. “And did you have to wreck such lovely curtains?”
Thoroughly confused, that unsettling sense of deja vu was tugging more demandingly at Feyre’s thoughts. This reminded her so much of one of her first interactions with Alis, when she’d been a scared mortal girl in the Spring Court…
Feyre glanced down at herself and realized with a start that her senses weren’t just disconnected from grief. Her once long and elongated arms and fingers, decorated lovingly with her mate’s tattoos, were now bare and short, thin from mortal starvation. She couldn’t hear Alis’s heartbeat, or scent her. Or… perhaps most distressingly, when she cast her magic towards the female, trying to scratch along her mental barriers for information, there was no magic to cast. She was no longer Made, no longer daemati, no longer a High Lady with the power of seven High Lords. Feyre was inexplicably human once more.
Feyre opened her mouth to speak, but another female servant with a bird mask entered, a breakfast tray in hand. She bid Feyre a curt good morning, set the tray on a small table by the window, and disappeared into the attached bathing chambers. The sound of running water filled the room.
Feyre shut her mouth, her head reeling. Was this a dream? Was she asleep somewhere in the Night Court, reimagining her first days in Prythian as a mortal? Was this an illusion created from a widowed mate too consumed with grief?
Feeling in autopilot, Feyre sat at the table and studied the porridge and eggs and bacon. If this was a dream, perhaps she’d wake up soon. But… Feyre felt a strong, baffling instinct curling in her gut that this was more than a dream.
She was mortal again. In the Spring Court, where the servants were still wearing their masks. It was almost as if… impossibly, it seemed as if time had turned back. Alis made no indication she remembered Feyre. Yet, somehow Feyre’s mind was unchanged.
It could be a trick, the less mystified parts of herself reasoned. Some twisted invention of Tamlin’s. Perhaps he’d kidnapped her while she was vulnerable in her anguish and whisked her away to reminisce on the time they’d fallen in love. Perhaps with Rhysand gone, Tamlin had thought he had a chance. But that didn’t explain how he’d manage to make her human again.
Or , that more hopeful part of her whispered, this was another world. Like the one Amren came from. A different timeline, where the war with Hybern hadn’t happened yet and she hadn’t gone Under the Mountain for Tamlin yet. Maybe Rhysand was alive.... She swallowed her breakfast dryly around that thought. He was alive, he had to be. Maybe this was a chance to start over so that she could save him.
Numbly, Feyre finished eating her breakfast and bathed. She was dressed in a deep purple tunic and let Alis braid her wet hair while Feyre stared inquisitively at her own reflection. Her ears were rounded once more, the ethereal glow of fae skin replaced with the gaunt and hollow hauntings of poverty. If this were indeed more than a grief-induced dream, Feyre would need to focus on getting stronger. The first time she had sat here, Feyre had been indignant and stubborn and grieving her mortal life and family. That Feyre hadn’t known yet what was coming, but she could be prepared this time. Prepared for Under the Mountain and everything after.
Alis seemed curious, if not a little suspicious, of Feyre’s silent compliance and suggested she take a walk around the grounds. Hoping a walk would provide a chance to gather information, Feyre agreed perhaps too readily.
As Feyre walked through the silent and empty halls, she reminded herself that Tamlin had initially glamoured his court and that there were likely eyes on her as moved through the halls of the manor. Feyre tried to recall her headspace when she’d first arrived in Spring Court as a mortal, the way she’d scrambled around in awe and wariness. If her inkling was correct, then she couldn’t display her familiarity with the manor that she had nearly been Lady of. Until she figured out a plan, she had to play her part of the stubborn and suspicious mortal.
Feyre was thoroughly entrenched in her musings by the time she stepped through the glass doors to the garden.
“You,” came the deep timber of a voice she was all too familiar with. Feyre jumped back a step, regarding the towering male figure that stood silhouetted in the light of the sun before her. Tamlin, mask and baldric and all. Perhaps he had information about what had happened. “Where are you going?” he asked in a gruff demand.
Feyre resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was too in the dark to know the best way to play this. For all she knew, Tamlin had betrayed them once again and this peculiar situation was a cruel design of his own.
“Good morning,” she said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest indignantly. “I was looking for you, actually. I was hoping you could give me some answers.”
His jaw tightened. “What would you like to know?” Despite biting out the words, he flashed his teeth in what Feyre supposed was meant to be an amicable smile.
She had to think quickly what she could ask him without raising his suspicions. Something feasible for her to have asked when she’d first met him, but would perhaps mean more if time hadn’t changed and Tamlin was indeed her captor.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded. “Am I to stay here against my will?”
Tamlin huffed an exasperated sigh. “As I’d told you last night, you’re not a prisoner here. The treaty prevents you from crossing the wall, but you are free to live anywhere in Prythian. Here, you will be safe. But I won’t prevent you from going elsewhere.”
Indeed, Feyre remembered him saying something similar to her once. And having no knowledge of the politics of the land at the time, it had been a laughable suggestion. For all she’d known, the other courts would have killed her the second she’d entered their lands. And in some ways she hadn’t been wrong. But if it was possible to get to Velaris…
No. First of all, it’d be impossible without the ability to winnow. And if her hunch was right, her court—her family—didn’t know her yet. She’d be treated as an intruder with dangerous knowledge of their secret city. Most of all, Rhysand… Rhysand was stuck Under the Mountain. She’d have to stay with Tamlin to save him.
But still, she had to fish for answers from Tamlin, flesh out if this was all just an act.
“Anywhere?” she mused, “Even to another court? Perhaps, uhm…” she tried to make it seem as if she were trying to recollect a piece of information she’d stumbled upon, not something which was intimately a part of her, “the Night Court?”
Tamlin stiffened as the words left her lips. Then he tilted his head back and laughed. It was a dark, mocking sound and Feyre tried not to flinch in outrage. “It would be your funeral then, human. Not all courts would be so welcoming as my own, you will find. I would not stop you from leaving, though I doubt you’d survive long enough to make it so far north as the Night Court.”
Feyre recoiled from the indifference in his tone, the almost cruel amusement curling up on his face. But it confirmed enough. There were no claws threatening to break free, none of the usual signs of possessiveness. She suspected if this were truly a trick by Tamlin’s hand, the threat of her fleeing to the Night Court would unhinge him as much as mention of Rhysand usually did.
But this Tamlin, she realized as she took in his furrowed brow and narrowed eyes, did not love her. Not yet, anyway, though he was tolerating her in an attempt to save his court. And it would once again be in vain, Feyre thought with a bleak sense of pity. For despite her knowledge of the curse, this time she would not be able to tell him she loves him and mean it. And Amarantha’s curse would know her love wasn’t true. So back Under the Mountain they would go.
Seemingly mistaking her silence for a sort of self-pity, Tamlin once again offered that smile which looked much closer to a cringe, “Would you like a tour?”
Knowing she would certainly get no answers out of him, Feyre shook her head and politely excused herself. There was only one way she’d get answers now, which meant she needed to find Lucien.