(Rhysand)
It was quiet, only the whispers of wind assaulting the mountain front outside seeped in, its moaning echoing through the deserted hallways like wraiths in mourning-their cries high and wailing much like the sound of discord that weaved through my own soul.
That empty, hollow dissonance that plagued my every step.
That symphony had droned through these halls for millennia, the chilling call that summoned those who reveled in darkness to come and play, to gorge themselves on the nightmares of the world and to get drunk on its cruelty, to writhe in its pleasure.
Now, those who had answered the call and dwelled in its darkness did so no longer.
I propped my elbow on my knee, resting my chin on my hand as I took in the sight before me, watching from the high throne that no longer served a ruler. Nothing more than an empty chair now.
The onyx tables, once overladen with food and drink, now sat empty, only dusty cobwebs clinging to the rims and bases of hastily discarded goblets, waving in the subtle draft of that howling wind that crept its way through the cracks of the mountain. A single unopened bottle of dark wine lay tipped on its side between the pewter dishes, fallen as though the last person who had touched it had been about to open it when they'd had dissolved into dust and gently knocked it askew.
I hadn't been to the Hewn City since that night, the night that I'd finished what had begun so many centuries before and had culminated in a vicious wound that had bled the Court of Dreams, my family, dry.
Keir had barely turned to acknowledge my presence when I'd arrived all those years ago, barely had time to register my or my family's appearance before I'd misted him and his filth into blood rain. I'd been too furious and bloodthirsty to have even enjoyed destroying them.
His poison had spread far enough and like a wound festering in a limb it was best that he was removed, quickly and efficiently, even if the need to break him again and again still thrummed through me. Part of me wished that I had savored it, had taken the time to tear him apart piece by agonizing piece, each blow a repayment for every second of agony and fear my daughter had suffered through in her final moments.
The image of her broken, mutilated wings rose to the front of my mind, the snapped sinew and delicate membrane shredded like thin paper.
Darkness rumbled through the court and into the mountain below as my temper rolled, this accursed place a taunting reminder of those who had hurt those I loved the most time and time again.
The distant memory of an iron nail puncturing a womb and a note flashed through my mind alongside the delicate face and vibrant violet eyes that I had cherished above all else.
I barely felt the droplets as they dripped to my pants, speckling dark patches across the fabric.
I should have never bargained with them, should have never granted him access to my home. Mor had known that his presence would eventually poison Velaris, would eventually taint what she and I both loved most.
We could have never known it would be such a vital part. That the cruel, conniving bastard would bargain with my mother's people to strike where it would hurt most. The prick had covered his tracks well, too, so well that had it not been for the loose-tongued woman from the Hewn City it might have taken us years to track it back to him.
Fortunately, she'd offered up everything without an ounce of resistance, whether from fear or guilt I still wasn't certain.
My hands clamped down on the chair's edge, knuckles white as I looked at the empty court before me once more.
I could destroy it, bring it down entirely, eradicate this chasm of sorrow and hatred that had no place in my court or my existence.
My thoughts turned Feyre, on the night that we'd first played that game together here before them, when she had played a pet and not her true role, my equal and my High Lady. A time that almost seemed a different life now, a time when things had not been as clear as they were now.
She had refused to set foot in this place since its downfall.
I wasn't entirely sure why I had come here myself, I realized, loosening my grip on the throne, idly brushing my knuckles across the smooth stone.
A sigh slipped through my lips as I lowered my leg and braced my elbows on my knees. The events of the last days flitted through my mind in a whirlwind, the image of discarded wings burned into my memory.
All of it because of who I was, of what I chose. I tried not to think on the horror that had flashed across my mate and son's faces when I had told them.
"They did what?" Cenric hissed from his seat on the couch between his mother and Mor, eyes narrowing as his hands bunched into fists at his sides. He'd recovered quickly from his bout of inebriation and ensuing misery that had followed. They'd returned to the Riverside Estate only a few hours before
"They cut their wings and discarded them," I repeated, the words like ash in my mouth. "Azriel is currently looking for leads regarding where all of these wingless females could have gone." And my brother was no closer to finding them either.
"Females?" Feyre inquired, leaning forward a bit. "All of them?" Mor's eyebrow quirked upwards at my mate's comment.
"Yes," I confirmed, shaking my head in an attempt to wrestle down the throbbing pain echoing at my temple. "Every set of wings had a clipping scar. Old scars." Old scars from old females who hadn't been spared the Illyrians' backwards ways.
"Is this some sick joke to them-?" Cenric hissed, a sudden pulse of that dark power echoing like a phantom in the room, brushing against my senses and sending the birds that had been sitting on the roof fluttering.
"Easy, Cenric," Feyre murmured to him, laying her hand on his shoulder as a quiver of fury thrummed through him, her own eyes shadowed. "Breathe."
"How dare they?" his growled, running his hands furiously through his eternally messy hair, "This has to end. I have to end this," Cenric rose from the couch, cobalt eyes glowing like fire. "I need to go back to training." His eyes locked with my own, fury furrowing his brow. "We start training now."
I opened my mouth to give my confirmation when my mate cut in, perhaps more coldly than she intended, "Should you be taking the Rite at all?"
I felt the sting of the words as they left her lips and tried not to wince too visibly as I saw Cenric's shoulders go rigid. Mor found a flowery pattern on the carpet suddenly fascinating.
Feyre folded her hands in her lap as she chewed absentmindedly on her lip, the only obvious sign of her agitation. "Given the current situation, maybe it would be better to postpone this until next spring-"
"No." The word was cold and forward, laced with a tone that Cenric had never used with his mother.
To deny him the Rite would only add insult to injury, no matter the state of the current affairs. Even if taking it would be near suicide for our son.
Feyre, I spoke gently down the bond, a bit of warning in the word, don't force this. Even if I was inclined to agree with her, worry knotting my shoulders. I suddenly became starkly aware that the Rite was only a few weeks away.
She cast her gaze towards me, her eyes beginning to fill with that deep raw panic I so often glimpsed on her face when she woke from nightmares about Celeste.
"There is no shame in postponing," Feyre offered, her tone laced with her poorly hidden worry, "wait until next spring, give us time to sort this out."
"So they can mark me for a coward? Absolutely not," Cenric shot back, his eyes burning like cobalt fire as he threw a hand out in agitation, "they already think I'm weak, that we're weak, why do you think they're pushing us the way they are?" his lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl, "they're trying to scare us, to set us off kilter, this is exactly what they want."
"Their games are not worth your life Cenric!" Feyre snapped back, "I won't let them take both of my children, I will not let you do this-"
I saw the mistake Feyre made as soon as the words left her mouth and magic snapped through the house so cold that ice skittering across the windows, stopping Feyre mid-sentence.
Cenric had gone ramrod still.
He leveled his gaze at his mother.
"You will not make me do anything," he growled low and slowly in response, "This has to be stopped and I will not tuck my tail and run from this like the coward you want me to play. Stop trying to protect me."
Feyre froze as his harsh words rang throughout the room as I tried to hide my flinch, it was like salt being poured into an open wound.
A pregnant silence fell over the room.
"Cenric," Feyre began again, her tone softer as she rose from her seat to approach our son who had moved to stare out the large bay window that overlooked the Sidra, the tick in his jaw prominent. "Think of the current state of things. Even Azriel can't pin anyone down, you'll be walking in there blind."
"Then let me draw them out," Cenric snarled as he watched the water flow past, the presence of his power like a dark blanket across the house. "Let me be the bait and let me finish what they started so long ago."
"Please, you can't risk yourself like this." Feyre's eyes flicked to Mor on the couch, looking for support. My cousin only shook her head, unwilling to intervene.
"And you think you can take all of them alone?" I inquired instead, leaning against the arm of the sofa. "You're going to be on your own out there, no magic, only brute force and your wits."
Cenric turned from the window, glaring daggers at me. "Don't coddle me," he hissed, that rare temper of his showing itself more frequently than I'd ever seen. "This isn't negotiable."
"Please," Feyre murmured, wrapping her arms around herself, "at least consider it, Cenric." Soft blue met hard cobalt for several heartbeats before a long sigh escaped my son's lips. He'd always been defenseless against his mother; we'd both been.
"I need space to think," he muttered, sidestepping her. "I'm going to the sitting room." My mate and I watched him disappear beneath the archway, his shoulders tight. No doubt going to find the piano, to play through his thoughts as he always did when things weighed too heavily.
A pacifist stranded in a hell-storm of shit and gore, that's what my son was. The thought of it tore at my soul as I hushed my own darkness to sleep.
"Has Azriel really found no leads?" Mor inquired as she turned her attention to me, her brown eyes flaring gold in the fading evening rays. "Is the trail that dead?"
"So it would seem." How the damned pricks had slipped through my brother's widespread net I wasn't certain. I sighed, rubbing at my face, exhaustion wearing on me. "We'll find them." Somehow even the words even felt limp on my own tongue.
The slight lilting melody of a piano began to weave its way through our home, a slow sad tune, one Cenric favored when the memory of his sister ate at him the worst.
I tried to swallow past the lump beginning to form in my throat.
"Then take me to the Steppes," Feyre replied, absently beginning to braid her hair back. "Let me see if I can track them; see if a huntress can fill in the gaps a shadowsinger is missing."
We came up empty-handed in our search, my mate and I.
We'd gone in secret, not even telling my brothers or Nesta of our presence there, hoping that the fewer people who knew of our presence the less likely they would be to take notice of our hunting.
It had been fruitless.
Even with her deft tracking skills, Feyre had been unable to pin down a single trail from where the wings had been dumped so carelessly. Any remaining traces seemed to have been swallowed up by the fresh snow that continued falling in light droves throughout the day, even in the rising temperatures of the fast-approaching spring.
Frustrated and furious, I'd dropped Feyre off at the Riverside Estate and told her I had business to attend to elsewhere and that I'd be home shortly. I'd sought out Azriel after, conveying what Feyre and I had, or rather hadn't found, in hopes that it might shine some light on his hunting.
From there I'd ventured to the Hewn City, seeking a quiet place to mull through my thoughts. I'd been in the thick of my thoughts when the sound of a throat being cleared caught my attention.
"Of all of the places to choose to brood . . ." Mor commented as she stepped across the expansive hall, her golden hair shimmering dimly in the remaining faelights, heeled shoes clicking on the obsidian floors. "Although with your flair for the dramatic I shouldn't be surprised."
"I'm not in the mood, Mor," I bit back a bit more harshly than intended, my frustration showing itself, "Why are you even here?"
My cousin absentmindedly ran her hand down the abandoned onyx table as she approached the throne, her eyes lost in the memory of the place. "Someone had to see where your 'business' had taken you. You're not nearly as sneaky as you'd like to believe."
I suppressed my sigh as I dropped my face into my hands again, the roaring of my power tugging relentlessly at me, begging for release. I shouldn't have been the least bit surprised.
"What do I do with Cenric?" I murmured aloud, my thoughts beginning to trickle out, "How do I protect him from all of this?"
"He's a stubborn thing," Mor hummed, folding her arms across her chest as she leaned against the edge of the table, looking up at me, "set in his ways when he wants something." She glanced sidelong. "But to go through with the Rite . . ." A breath slipped through her lips. "I don't know if there is a right answer. Feyre wants him to postpone it, though we both know he'll refuse." You want him to postpone it, her eyes seemed to sing.
She wasn't wrong.
"What right do we have to deny him?" I inquired, my thoughts melding into a chaotic haze of uncertainty, "it would be a wound against him if we prevented him from doing what he wants. He is an adult." Not that twenty-eight was much more than a fledging by fae standards, younger than I was when I took the Rite.
"He is your child," Mor shrugged, "you could always just forbid him from doing it." Since that had gone so phenomenally well when Feyre had said as much. She rested her palm against her arm, the red of her sweater a beacon against the black background. "The whole Rite nonsense it stupid anyway—I told you, Azriel, and Cassian as such when you took it, not that you listened to me then, either."
"And the cultists, the Illyrians?" I questioned, watching Mor with careful eyes.
"We could always just kill them, uproot them completely." A pause. "All of them." She rolled the fallen wine bottle down the table, watching it careen away, only turning to face me once it had dropped over the edge and shattered on the floor with a crash. "I'm certain Azriel would be more than happy to oblige."
She was pissed then too, excessively so if she were truly insinuating annihilating the entirety of the Illyrians.
"Mor . . ." I murmured, watching as my cousin's soil-toned gaze turned back to me, truth heavy in her eyes.
"When does it end, Rhysand?" she inquired, her voice laden with that tone that saw beyond the surface, "When do they stop resenting you for what you are? When do we stop losing what's most important over what we're supposed to maintain?"
A flash of the sneer on Keir's face came to the forefront as I thought on the access he had been granted to Velaris, the mocking he had put Mor through. On the fact that his allowance in Velaris was what allowed the rebels to slip in and take Celeste.
More mistakes I had made, ones that couldn't be undone.
"See if you can postpone the Rite," Mor advised one last time, pushing off the table. "Cancel it for this year so Cenric will have no choice but to not join in the fray. Then root them out, all of them. End this before it can begin again." Mor made her way towards the great archway that opened out of the throne room.
"Rhys," She paused before the entrance, glancing back over a shoulder, her hand braced against the obsidian archway, "Whatever you choose, know that we all will stand with you through it until the end."
With that, Mor disappeared into shadow, no doubt winnowing back home.
I ran a hand through my hair. Whatever I chose. I knew no matter what that my family would follow me without question to the end, even if that meant destroying my mother's people entirely. A hollow ache formed in the base of my stomach as I rose.
One thing at a time, I reminded myself. I wouldn't let Cenric die, under no circumstances was I willing to risk my son's life to the hands of the bastards who had killed my daughter. I had to figure out how to postpone the Rite. My stomach clenched. Or somehow trust that he would be able to survive.
Cenric's fingers danced over the keys as he poured his essence into the slow melody, the notes skittering across his skin. He thought of his sister, of how she would sit and mock his playing for hours while he stumbled through the first few practice sessions, how she would praise him when he completed a piece correctly, when he improved.
She had been a light snuffed out too soon, a light wrongly stolen.
The soft, solemn melody slowly shifted, as though the notes themselves were growing surer of themselves. Cenric's mind wandered to the Rite as flowing chords turned to slow staccato notes delicately accented with high tones, an inching, growing medley.
He had yielded to his mother only to keep her peace of mind, he would take the Rite regardless, no matter the price he might have to pay to ensure the bastards never walked off the field again.
That simple but determined tune gathered complexity, beginning to strum into a high crescendo, crashing like the waves of the ocean against a battered seashore.
He knew exactly how he was going to draw them out. All of them.