Author's Note: Hey! This is my first ACOTAR fanfic (hope you like it!). I really want to explore why Rhys acted the way he did when we last see him in in ACOTAR, so hopefully this fanfic will answer that. The first few chapters will mirror the book, and then I'll write what I think happens next (woo Night Court!).

I'm shamelessly FeyRhys, but I'm going to try to keep this as non-OOC and canon as possible, so fair warning: there may also be some FeyTam in here later for things to make sense. Also, huge spoilers for ACOTAR, but chances are you've probably read the whole book anyway. This first chapter is kind of slow, but the next one should be fun.

Hope you enjoy,

-cy.

It's Fire Night when he first sees her, this mortal girl so out of place.

She has brown-gold hair and is trying very hard to act like she belongs here- firm steps, chin held high, voice cool and assured- but her recoiling from the touch of the three faeries gives her away in an instant.

He is not a High Lord for nothing, and in the Night Court picking up on the subtlest signs is what saves your life.

Her attempts to shake the faeries off are clumsy and untutored, and when he comes to her it's less to play the savior and more to amuse himself.

It's Fire Night, and he's sick of pageantry.

What he wants isn't the crowd's emotions: excitement crackling up in cinnamon sparks, lust beating in a lush and savory drumline. He wants the rarer ones, this girl's fear shivering in violin strands under his tongue. Bonfire smoke and the scent of cider curls around him as the Spring magic replenishes itself.

Oh, he will enjoy this.

He loops a hand around her shoulder, proprietary, and his mouth tilts up when her shoulders hunch under his hand. "There you are. I was looking for you."

When her eyes meet his, Rhysand suppresses a shiver. The first rule of survival is to give nothing away.

But even so, her eyes surprise him. They're feral, hunter's eyes, eyes that calculate the distance to a creek or a rock, that take in his beauty and weigh out his danger in a blink. She insists she came with friends. He knows it's a lie, can smell and taste it. The three faeries skitter off when he dismisses them, and Rhys laughs when the girl asks if he's part of the Spring Court.

"Are you sure you're meant to be here?" He tips his head back to the sky, savoring the procession of stars. "Your friends have told you so little about our culture."

She crosses her arms. "I know enough."

"Enough to avoid ending up in a compromising position at the start of the Great Rite? Somehow I doubt it. Believe me, mortal girl," he leans in close to her and smells honeysuckle and apple blossoms, Spring magic, as he whispers, "now is not the night to rely on the better nature of the Fae. Tonight is when the monsters come out of their cages."

Gaze hooded, she backs up, light on her feet. "Does that mean you're one of them? One of the monsters?"

"Oh, we're all monsters. But if you're asking if I'm one of the especially bad ones, the ones you humans whisper stories about in the night, well." Rhys allows a sliver of darkness to claw its way into his eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to accompany me on a tour of the festivities and decide for yourself."

She swallows, her mouth a fat smear of peach as she trots out the standard, conversation-ender, "Enjoy the Rite."

He shouldn't watch her back flit through the crowd, shouldn't trace the thin thread of her anxiety until it disappears with her under the drone of drums and the frenzy. Ashes flicker up into the heavens, and Rhys stands by himself. Has he really just be turned down by a mortal girl? Him, a High Lord?

He sniffs, more out of annoyance than to taste the magic again. Amarantha's price for him leaving from Under the Mountain tonight was steep, and he's already struck out. A mortal girl shouldn't affect him so- not his hard-won reprieve, not when this one night cost him so much to arrange in the first place.

Rhys straightens his dark tunic, and swirls once more into the crowd, beckoning a masked faerie into the darkness. She, at least, laughs and follows.

He is not losing his touch.

-o-

He does not think about the mortal girl again until he strips Lucien's glamour from her in Tamlin's parlor.

"I wish I could say this was surprising." Rhys schools the rage out of his countenance. "But I've told enough mortal girls I not to get into trouble to know that they tend to do the exact opposite."

The fox informs him that the girl's his lover. Rhys rolls his eyes, sweeping Lucien away with a wave. His talon curls lazily into her mind, half out of spite for the glamour, and half...

Her eyes shake with fury and fear, but she does not cry out.

"You're trying so hard not to let your terror show." He muses. "How utterly enjoyable."

"Let her go, Rhys." Tamlin growls. "This is over."

"It's over," Rhys breathes, sifting through her emotions casually, "when I decide it is. Or did you forget about that as well when you settled back down in this Cauldron-scalded manor?"

Her memories curl over his fingers and her thoughts are so insidious he wants to swim in them. And suddenly Tamlin's whole plan reveals itself: bite marks, a faerie-wolf slain, a huntress, hate scabbing into love. Rhys says enough to humiliate all of them-because how dare they glamour him, attempt to fool him when he was the one who taught them everything about legerdemain and shadows.

He didn't expect them to stay friends and battle comrades, but he expected better than this.

He runs his hand through her mind one last time, and lets go. "It's too bad, really. You finally decide to play the game, and you'll lose your winning hand as final bets are called. She would have been the one to do it, too." He stopped having pity for Tamlin, for all of them, when the Night Court was forced to barter with Amarantha.

But to be able to break the curse, to set things up so that Tamlin would kill his Lady Under the Mountain...that might be promising.

The girl tells him her name is Clare Beddor, and Rhys inclines his head. "I'll send Amarantha your regards."

A plan crooks into motion in his head.

-o-

Her name, of course, isn't Clare Beddor because the real Clare Beddor is hanging from the rafters in Amarantha's throne room.

Before them, the girl from Fire Night and Tamlin's parlor is standing square-shouldered, demanding to claim Tamlin. Rhys' own shoulders ache and he shifts to flex them when as few people as possible in the room are watching him. No one has sympathy for Amarantha's whore, after all, and he would not have survived this long if he had not long learned how to hide his weaknesses.

It's when Amarantha summons him forward that the girl finally looks at him again. Her eyes go wide a moment, prey scenting predator. Rhys allows her one contemptuous smirk. Of course he recognized her. Of course he knew she wasn't the person she said she was.

He still needed a living girl to bring back, though. And it wasn't like Tamlin had spoken up to save the false girl either. Rhys had hoped that Amarantha would not have made him extract the name from Lucien by holding his mind, but it was always a possibility.

At least Rhys could make the death quick.

He could not promise much now that all seven of the High Lords had fallen Under the Mountain, but pain he could cut short. His hands tighten in Lucien's mind as the fox continues his silence.

And then the girl speaks. "Feyre! My name is Feyre."

Rhys loosens his grip on Lucien's mind and lets the girl's name wash over him like a wind's current. Feyre, an old name.

Amarantha seals the terms of their contract and read the riddle, twice. While the Attor attacks her, Rhys' mind wanders through the riddle and solves it. Love, of course. The hard part will be getting that human girl, that Feyre, to listen to him long enough for him to pass her the answer if she wasn't clever enough to solve it already.

That's when Amarantha forbids any of them from helping her with the riddle.

Rhys' hands twist themselves into knots in his pockets. Fine. Then his loophole will be helping her in her other challenge. It's all in the wording of the contracts, after all, and this one was sloppy.

The guards drag her body down the hall, her golden hair catching the firelight again. Feyre is so stark and slender, a glass knife: lethal but infinitely breakable. Tsking and walking back through the hall to his own quarters, he hopes she's stronger than she looks. Thus far, he's unimpressed.

In a secluded hallway, a High Fae from the Autumn Court passes him and whispers that he is the worst kind of whore.

Rhys doesn't break stride. He has heard and endured many more, much worse things than that.

And he remains unimpressed.