My first attempts at Feysand! TW for implied/referenced domestic abuse. Huge thanks to highqueenofelfhame for beta-reading!
He'd suspected it for a time, tried to push it off as his own well known bias. Told himself he was being paranoid, cynical, hell even downright obsessive. But then she confirmed it, this fear that consumed him. Unknowingly to be sure. It's not as if Feyre would willing trust such knowledge to him, Rhys thought with more than a hint of bitterness.
The bond between them had shown him the demolished study. He'd felt her shock and fear as sharply as if it were his own. It had taken him a moment to realize it wasn't. Gods how he wished it were.
Every time his eyes closed he saw the paint splattered everywhere. That damn red paint sliding down the wall could've just as easily been his mate's blood.
The thought alone fills him with such a mind numbing wrath. The mountain below Rhys trembles in response.
He's so completely and utterly fucked. Because it was one thing to let her go, to leave her in the arms of a male who loved her and she him. It was something else entirely to stand aside while Tamlin neglected her. Hurt her. Let her guilt eat away at all the color, all the humanity that had once sparked in her stunning blue grey eyes.
Something dark and primal, fueled by rage, deep inside him was aching. Clawing and begging to get free, screeching at him to put a stop to this agony and bring his mate home.
She's not mine, he reprimanded that piece sharply.
But neither is she his, the piece snarled back.
That wasn't entirely true though, was it? She fucked him, laughed with him, comforted him. She loved him. Feyre was much more Tamlin's then she would ever be Rhys', mates or no.
Sometimes, when Rhys was feeling particularly morose or after he'd drank a bit too much, he decided that this might be his punishment for killing Tamlin's brothers all those years ago.
Then he thought of his mother and sister's mutilated bodies and suddenly cosmic justice didn't mean a fucking thing. No matter what price he had to pay for their vengeance it would always be worth it. But should Feyre have to pay for this as well? Should she have to watch as the love Tamlin held for her became poisoned by his compulsive need to protect?
No. Of course not.
The answer to that question was easy.
Rhys stood from his chair and wandered down the hall, to the room that still held the scent of her. If only the answer to this whole thing could be as painless. Rhys nearly snorted at his own delusional thoughts, as if this could be solved by something simple he had previously overlooked.
The bond between them was silent, nearly hollow with Feyre's despair. Once again he tugged gently, felt that brief flicker of life on the other end. He clung to it.
Clung to that bit of brightness and prayed it would hold on another day.