Author's Note:

I finally read ACOMAF and OMG! I'm so sorry for the lack of updates- I got slammed with exams for school and only had time to read it now (I know, I know) and WOW I did not believe this could happen.

A little housekeeping: all the previous chapters were written before ACOMAF came out, and all the chapters that follow are probably going to be me doing ACOMAF from Rhys' POV with some hidden scenes and other good stuff added in. So yeah, from this point on you should probably assume spoilers for ACOMAF. I...probably will also need to raise the content rating in the future from T to M, so keep an eye out for that.

Anyway, thanks for reading and sticking with this! I made this chapter extra long because you guys are the greatest. And now, back to our favorite couple.

It's not like he doesn't trust Feyre.

It's more like he doesn't trust anyone in this side of his Court.

Because this is the way it has to be, a constant tug-of-war between dream and nightmare, constantly drawing his enemies in closer until one of them breaks. It's a bad kind of dance, to have to go as deeply into the darkness as he forces his opponents to go, but it's what he is and always has been, tiptoeing on the edge of monstrous.

And what he always will be, darkness incarnate even as he craves the stars.

Rhys moves through the halls, following the strand of the bond to take him to Feyre. It's night and there are corridors that end suddenly in cliffs and spirits who haunt certain rooms because they're tired of being lonely. There are things in this darkness that even he hasn't catalogued, that have lived in the Hewn City longer than he's been its master.

And sure, it probably sounds stupid to have kept her here when there are other places. Another city, perhaps, that would suit her better.

But there is one thing he has sworn ever since he came into power, a promise he kept even when he was Under the Mountain, and that was to keep that city safe. As much as he would like to trust her, the cruel and calculating part of his head still knows she is an unknown variable, made all the more dangerous by being his mate.

And he knows the stories about lords wreathed in green and half-demon suitors. He knows how they end and he knows the score. It's not like he and Feyre are going to end up together.

The throne room of the Night Court is less a room where he sits and presides and more a place where he rules. These past few weeks, Rhys has spent almost every night in here, answering challenges, hosting lavish and drunken parties, dispensing funds to repair crumbling bridges and collapsed corridors, administering punishments, and addressing those fae who haven't seen him in months, years, who wonder if he's really as terrifying as he makes himself out to be.

He's done enough terrible things for what he wants to know that he's not going to get a happy ending.

Still, Feyre is standing dead center in the empty room, head tilted up to the banners and sigils tucked into the cavern's high ceiling. He's not sure if she's still mad at him or if he's still mad at her for getting past his shield. The bond blurs it sometimes, and she's not paying attention.

"It's getting late," he says. Waits.

He asked the Morrigan to guard her while they're here, to watch out as his charge roams from his suite of rooms in the cut-rock palace to other places. Mor had said it might just be easier to bar some doors to her, give Feyre a set number of rooms to peruse instead of setting guards and shadows to protect her. "You wouldn't have had to deal with a Boge if we did it my way," Mor had snickered earlier. "Suit yourself."

But Mor was not Under the Mountain. And as much as she's experienced the horrors of this peak, she eventually escaped them. There are days when Rhys still wakes up convinced that there's no light from the sky because there is no sky, no stars, that it's all endless glittering caverns and a single hollow smile yearning to swallow him whole.

He's been awake the same nights that Feyre has, when she sits bolt upright in cold terror, wondering what phase the moon's at before she realizes that doesn't matter anymore. Sometimes he's not sure who's having the nightmare or where it originated, but he shields harder all the next day, hoping it wasn't him.

He knows what it's like to be trapped.

So he will not restrict her movement, but he assigns her shadows, even though Mor is getting exhausted from fending off unwelcome visitors or inventing excuses for him when Rhys is so tired that he sleeps through meetings.

Feyre, of course, will see none of this. Because that is who he is, master of shadows and legerdemain, and he will not reveal more than he has to, especially when it's about the things he's trying to protect.

Feyre casually glances over her shoulder at him in the throne room. "This place draws you in."

She's not wrong: the emotional residue here is a black hole. It's the involuntary shiver of victory and defeat, the tart spike of having everything you want within reach and not quite being able to touch it. It's temptation and rage, spoiled hopes and slashes of satiation. This, he thinks, is what humans far from fae mean when they talk about ghosts, that brush of memory sliding over your shoulder like a foreign glance, a certainty that something is waiting if you'd only turn around and look.

"Well, it's a throne room for a reason," he says. "Come on, let's go for another scintillating round of study and try not to kill each other."

They walk through the halls, all deserted.

It used to happen less frequently, faeries coming after him once the sun slipped below the horizon, when the Nightmare Court was all he had and even it seemed like it would slide from his grasp. High Fae would be deferential in the halls and plot to depose him in their heads. He stopped it, through blood and death and humiliation; he broke bones and stained every tile of this floor with fae blood.

He will have to do it again. Kier no doubt wonders: Rhys can see it when the faerie looks at him in meetings, wondering what kind of High Lord would leave a female, his own rejected daughter, in charge of their most precious city.

He'll deal with it. It just-

It just makes him so tired sometimes.

"You don't want me there after dark." Feyre says finally, when they enter her room again.

Rhys runs a hand through his hair. "Oddly enough, my Court is dangerous, even with me present."

"Really? I would never have guessed." Feyre looks ready to throw something at him, but then something in her deflates and all the fight leaves her. This has been happening more and more and it never fails to unnerve him. "Between you an Tamlin, no one tells me what's going on. No one's honest with me, Rhys."

It's the first time she's called him by this name, the shorter version, the one that doesn't sound like she's trying to mock him with it when she uses it.

Rhys double checks the protection spells as he takes a turn about the room. He can't tell her everything, and as much as he despises that this makes him like Tamlin in her mind, he'll keep those secrets.

But maybe there's something else he can tell her.

He presses a strand of power into the wards around this suite and threads it through, eyes closed. "The High Lord in the Night Court is chosen through a contest of power."

Feyre plays with a moonstone as she sits in a chair by the writing desk. "I thought it was always through family lines."

"It depends. Often, the line isn't the worst way to gauge power. After all, two powerful fae will often produce a powerful offspring, though it's not always the case. The Night Court is used to," he snaps off the end of the magic and tucks it into the warding spell, "testing its rulers, especially those it doubts."

Her brow furrows, like she's not sure if he's giving her a history lesson or reveal something he shouldn't about his position in the Court. "So the Boge, all that-"

He yawns, unable to prevent it, hoping she won't notice. "I have been mostly gone for fifty years, Feyre darling. Sometimes I was able to return to my Court, but Amarantha deliberately kept my leash short."

"So why are you doing this?" Feyre sets the moonstone down with a snap, nervous she cracked it or damaged the desk but too angry to let it overwhelm her. "Why even bother training me? Surely you can't get that much enjoyment from playing around in my head."

She says it like she means for it to cut him, and it does, but not because he feels guilty about taking time away from his other duties. It gets to him because he doesn't entirely have the answer himself.

The best he can think is that it's because they were both there when it got bad, and she's the only person he can think of who still wakes up like he does, wondering if it's really over.

"Someone's got to teach you about what you are." He says as blandly as he can, picking up the stone and flipping it over his knuckles. "And since no one else seems willing or able to step up to the task, you have me for your teacher. Get some rest and we'll work more on defending yourself tomorrow."

He puts the stone down, still warm from her touch. There was a small part of him that hoped she'd insist on his bringing the fable book with to her like she did yesterday, but she doesn't. Just turns as he fades back into shadow and winnows out, to make sure he's really gone.

And Rhys leaves, even though he knows she won't sleep. He's careful about what the bond shows her from his side: it's easy to make sure that no strong emotions go through; those are tall ships that aren't hard to blockade. It's the subtler things he worries about, the tiny, fast comets puncturing his atmosphere of control, the weariness in him as he makes his way back down to the throne room, how everything aches, and then the quiet blaze of accomplishment when he's faced with opponents he finally can defeat.

-o-

Later that night, he rests his elbows against the basin of the sink, head in his hands.

There is blood and bone in his hair, snapped wing membrane matted to his shirt, and he's got to wash it out.

This is his life now, tearing fae who once begrudgingly accepted his rule to pieces. This is what he has become. And sometimes it's so close to the person he had to be when he was with Amarantha that he has to check his own wings for ash or broken spots, even though he knows there will be none. The dirty clothes are handed to servants or burnt, he bandages his cuts, and tells himself that where he is is better than where he was.

There are stirring of rumor of Hybern learning about Amarantha's death, and Rhys knows that continent well enough to augur what that will mean. War is coming, and none of them in Prythian are prepared for it.

Azriel passes him secrets whenever his own spies uncover anything, and Rhys draws up battle plans. He'll have to do it again, cut off his starlit city from the world- it's not like they really got used to trading with people outside the wards again. Keep them all in an uneasy lockdown until all this is over, until he could guarantee that they'd be untouched.

Under the Mountain, at least, he could talk to her about what was happening. He could pretend he just had one Court and that it was all that worried him. But now, it's complicated. Now, he wishes he could tell her everything. And now, with her in the Spring Court and Tamlin holding an uneasy truce, they might as well be enemies.

Rhys runs water over his face, over his hair, lets the debris from tonight's battles run into the basin, then stares at himself in the mirror too long until someone else's eyes stare back.

-o-

"This might be easier," Feyre says, rubbing her temples the next day, "if I could practice on someone other than you."

They're in the study again, and the afternoon light is coming in from the highest windows. Rhys waves off her suggestion and stifles another yawn. He's not thrilled about it always having to be this way either, always being so tired but always having to be on guard, but here they are. Night Court challengers only come out at night, and he'll answer them with sneers and seething talons for as long as he has to.

It's just being awake during the day afterward to be with Feyre that makes it tricky.

And the thing is that she's made good progress today. Her shield is more solid and blocks the most basic attempts to enter her mind. She's good at concentrating and guarding things, and he's not surprised by that.

It'll take more time for her to keep it up under assault, or block more sophisticated attacks, but it's a start.

He ticks off the reasons on his hand. "One, you should be grateful have secured me for your tutor. There are faeries in this court who would quite literally give several body parts not fit to be mentioned in polite conversation for this."

Feyre shakes her head like that's a joke.

"Two, because we don't want anyone knowing what the full extent of your ability is. You haven't been in the Night Court terribly long," Rhys tucks a page from the budget back into place, "but we're actually very cutthroat and ruthless."

"No, really?" Feyre says.

"Three, despite your admirable stab at humor there, you are still unskilled." Rhys holds up his hands to deflect the inevitable objection. "I wish I could say I meant this in a kind and deprecating way, but I don't. Your attempts to shield, while more effective than they were yesterday, remain fairly haphazard. On the flip side, your attacks are crude enough that if I were to allow you to practice with someone less practiced than I was, you'd run a significant chance of causing them permanent brain damage or killing them slowly and painfully."

He takes a sip of the rose hip tea. The cup is see-through, carved glass the color of sunset, and it changes hues when the light hits it. "Happily, you can at least practice shielding on your own when you're back at the Spring Court. The other, we can do now."

Feyre taps her fingers on the table. "Am I really such a danger to your servants that you wouldn't let me practice with them?"

Rhys sets the cup back down. "Try breaking into my mind without hacking at my shield like a machete and I'll tell you."

She gives him a look.

"Feyre darling," he says, "do you suppose you are the only one who went Under the Mountain to save someone? Please, do me the honor of not discounting me entirely."

"Who was it?" She asks, and she's more alive in this moment than he's seen her in days. "I didn't think there was anyone you'd save."

"Who else?" He extends an arm behind them, encompassing the palace beyond. "My Court may be terrible, but that doesn't stop them from being mine."

They work for a while, Feyre trying to break into his head again, this time with permission, and he fends her off as he reads through budgets from twenty years ago. The accounting fae who kept the books were frightfully dull, though Mor's said that something was off in this particular year. She has a few ideas on who could be messing with the books, but she wanted a second opinion before coming down on them in full-blown fury mode.

So here he is, nose-deep in dusty records.

"You have been reading that page for the last fifteen minutes." Feyre says after another unsuccessful, but less disastrous attempt.

"It," Rhys sniffs, "is a very dense page."

And the last reason, the one that he doesn't tell her, is that it's kind of nice having someone around who he can snap at on the regular who doesn't cringe and hustle away or desire to kill him. His Inner Circle fills that role nicely when he's in Velaris, but down here, it's just him. Even his allies have to be pretending to subvert him for the Nightmare Court to take them seriously.

Maybe it's because he finally feels a little more evenly matched in her that the rest of being back here and sorting out this mess that his court has become hurts less. You always expect it to go to hell when you leave, but it's the coming back and rebuilding that gets you, the stuff you don't anticipate hurting you that does. And truthfully, Amren and Mor have done a good job. Yes, there's someone stealing from the treasury, but there's always someone stealing from the treasury before he kills them.

They switch between mental barriers and reading when Feyre gets tired and it's almost like she's just a houseguest, if things like that existed in this place, if people actually visited the Nightmare Court for pleasure and not because they wanted something.

And it's almost something he doesn't want to end.

So, later that evening, he stands up and holds a hand out to her. "Come on," Rhys says, "and I'll show you something I've been hiding."

The bond between them is a crackle of electricity, and sometimes once it's been tamped down long enough with their shields and walls that when it they let down their barriers it spreads through the space between them like a lightning storm. He is acutely aware of the way her body navigates the halls behind him, how she traces the flick of his cape as he walks with her eyes.

How she does not want to be watching him like this, and reminds herself of Tamlin, and of the fact that she only has four more days to last this out before she can go back and stop worrying that she's betraying everyone.

When they reach the top of the mountain, her anxiety prickles through the air around him, paprika scattered like caltrops. He laughs. "What?"

"How do you always do that?" Feyre's nervousness tips over some unseen ledge into anger, edged with glittery flakes. "Are you reading my mind without telling me all the time or am I just that obvious?"

There is really no good way to explain this. And his hesitation must show for a second, because she sees it.

"And what," she thrust her arm forward, palm up with the tattoo gleaming through the night, "is this? You said it was a bargain. What exactly does that mean?"

The eye tries very hard not too move under their scrutiny but it blinks once, miserably. Feyre slaps it.

Rhys runs a hand through his hair. He'd wanted to show her something beautiful about his Court, not dissect what ties them together. What comes dangerously close to the other bond they share. "Remember how I explained earlier that Night magic is primarily things like this, shields, emotional magic?"

"You cast a spell on me?"

"You gave me permission." He holds up his hands. "I didn't exactly have a lot of options left when I came to you down in the dungeons."

"You still didn't have to invade my head to save me!"

"I did the only thing I could do to keep you alive." Rhys cuts in, too sharp. "And to keep me alive as well. What? Did you think Amarantha would treat me kindly once she found out about it, if she hadn't thought I was using you for worse purposes than I was? That mark has prevented more than just your death."

Feyre looks like she's going to be sick, but internally he sees her making sense of it. Understanding, even if it's something she doesn't like. "You're always playing both ends against the middle to get what you want."

Rhys bows. "I am a product of my environment."

"You're awful."

"I know. You'd think it would get tiring for me to be this charming all the time, but no, against all odds I preserve." He swings around. "Now, we have sights to see."

She makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, but then something in her wavers and she sinks to the floor on the staircase. And just like that, he knows it's over. There are silences, tepid politeness that take him hours to break through, and as much as he struggles to, she keeps shutting him out.

"Feyre?" Rhys should not be letting this much concern into his voice. Not when they're in this Court, when other things can hear him acting like anything other than a playboy with a taste for sharp things. Mor was right, he was stupid to think he could keep her here without consequences-

"I," she says, taking a breath, "just want to go back to my room. No sightseeing. If that's all right."

"That's fine." He kneels down beside her, even though he knows she won't want his help in getting back up.

"Is it?" Feyre's eyes slip past him, into another room, another space, like she's someone else talking to someone else.

-o-

And so that's how it ends. She doesn't go with him to see the night sky all lit up in the darkness, doesn't leave her room, and even though Mor says it's easier guarding her like this, Rhys knows his Third is worried as well.

She pages through the fable book from dawn to dusk, the shadows filter through the walls to bring her food, ask her if she wants to see the balconies again, but she always tells them no.

Sometimes it seems so easy to pretend like nothing happened, like they're the people they were Under the Mountain when there was no Tamlin tearing apart all the Courts to get her back. But without a threat like Amarantha breathing down their necks, what is she to Rhys and he to her? Feyre sleeps for hours and hours and nightmares still come back to claim her before she wakes.

-o-

The week passes. There is no more reading, no more fights in libraries, and no more of her watching the sky with her mouth open, stars reflected in her eyes. She stays in her room until the days are up and it's time for her to go back.

And he does returns her to the Spring Court, because a bargain's a bargain and he doesn't go back on his deals, even though he could pull an Amarantha and say that he's changing terms on her, that Feyre didn't nail him down as well as she should have known to while she was bleeding out. He does it less because he's her mate and more because they've both been in enough terrible bargains to last a lifetime.

He takes her back in grand style, winnowing them right past all of Tamlin's useless wards (keep the High Lord of Night Court out, good luck) so that Feyre won't even have to walk that far.

"Well, Feyre darling, I suppose you're back where you belong now." He smirks at a Spring Court fae who has just broken several dishes and a vase in her haste to run off and, no doubt, summon Tamlin. "Miss it?"

She doesn't say anything, but something in her face shifts at those words, like he's said exactly the wrong thing. The bond pulls them closer and he sees wedding dress fittings, constantly being trailed by a High Priestess eager to put the next generation of the Spring Court in her power, and Feyre sitting alone in her room because no one will let her out of the manor house, no matter how much she begs or schemes.

He pulls back, suddenly needing to put distance between them.

"You don't have to do this." Rhys says, and part of him is surprised by the undercurrent of a threat in his voice. "You can walk away."

She rounds on him as the sounds from within the house rise to clamor. "Oh, really? I can just run away from all this, strike out on my own?"

"If you wanted."

"Where would I go? I'm not human anymore, I can't go back to my sisters or my father if I wanted to. I'm High Fae, and I don't belong to any Court. I don't belong anywhere." She laughs, bitter. "Running away, that would be stupid. Tamlin won't let...Ianthe needs me to coordinate lunch parties and get things together for the ceremony. Besides, I'm the only one who can keep Tam calm. And on top of that, all the other Courts want me for reasons of their own. At least here I'm safe."

Because they've told her that so often she believes it even though she knows it's a lie. His hands clench into fists at his sides.

Because she will be safe if she stays here. Tamlin will protect her for the rest of his life, and once they're wed no one will touch Feyre for fear of him. She'll lead a life without danger, without always chasing after the edge of darkness, without risking everything she has to make things work out all right.

Rhys exhales. It should be enough, that she did it all once for them, put herself in mortal danger, actually died, even, to break the curse. And a part of him understands: some nights he wakes up in the dead of night so tired and beaten down that he flies to his townhouse in Velaris just because he needs the lights of the artists' quarter to keep him company through the darkness.

The cost of saving other people is messing yourself up, and he can't really fault her for deciding she's done with it.

He just-

He thought it would be different.

"You can always call for me, you know." Rhys says it cavalierly, calling threads of shadow to lick along his shoulders as more Spring Court fae fill the hall. Still no Tamlin. "If ever you feel like ticking Tamlin off here and there, I've been told I'm incredibly effective. And for you, I'll always be able to pencil in some time between rebuilding my Court if it means making his life more difficult."

A ghost of a smile curls around her lips. "I don't think he'd appreciate that."

Rhys bows and places one hand over his heart. "That, Feyre darling, is precisely the point."

He can almost swear that she's about to laugh, but then there's a roar that nearly shatters glass across the hallway, and Tamlin rushes toward them in a sprint. Time's up.

"Until next month, then." Rhys inclines his head again, and winnows out slowly, just enough to make Tamlin think that he can still rend him to pieces if he leaps at the last moment. Just before Rhys vanishes, he winks and Feyre's wide eyes are the last things he sees before Tamlin crashes to the floor.

And it shouldn't make Rhys happy to hurt the person she loves, but it does, probably because she didn't seem all that happy there anyway.