This chapter includes mentions of rape! If this triggers you, please proceed with caution.
Feyre was cold. This kind of cold reminded her of her time in poverty, her time in that dreadful cottage that her family took refuge in from the world's wickedness. It wasn't possible. She was in the Night Court in bed next to her mate, Rhys, not in that terrible "home." Rhys must've pulled the blankets from her by accident. Feyre reached to grab the blanket, but she didn't come into contact with the soft fabric, she came into contact with the hard cold floor. So that's why it felt freezing. With a jolt, Feyre woke up in a pant, her eyes adjusting to the sudden light of the room.
Her eyes glanced around the room in a frenzy. No, she wasn't cold because she was in that cottage or because Rhys pulled the blankets from her. She was cold because she was lying on the floor that housed the Court of Nightmares. She was starting to convince herself that the shiver she felt wasn't from the floor, it was from the people staring at her. They were the same people who were smiling at her heinously, the subjects of the man who sat on the throne, Rhys. No, this wasn't Rhys. This was Rhysand, the High Lord of the Night Court, and the ruler of what Feyre tended to ignore, the Court of Nightmares. What was going on?
"Took you long enough to wake up. I was ready to start making someone scream as an alarm clock for you." Rhys spoke gruffly.
"What's going on here, Rhys?" Feyre asked.
"It's High Lord to you. I just brought you down here so we can have a little fun." Rhys taunted her.
"If that was the truth, I wouldn't be here shivering on the floor like I was in the Winter Court. I'd be right next to you. And this usually isn't your idea of fun, this is usually where you go when you're pissed off." Feyre mentioned.
"Already thinking of the next court you're going to taint, little whore? But I guess you have some reason to do so anyways, you always have to leave your mark on everything." Rhys purred.
Feyre stood up tall against Rhys. She didn't understand why she was here, in the middle of the night for Mother's sake. This wasn't the first time Rhys has been acting strange either. Ever since the war ended, the Rhys that Feyre knew and loved was fading away bit by bit. At this point, Feyre was thinking that Rhys was close to gone, but she could try to lead him back, just like he did to her not long ago.
"What's your problem?" Feyre demanded from Rhys.
"You. You said I come down here when I'm pissed, and I am. I'm pissed at you. I've had quite some time to think about how you've screwed up my life ever since you came into it. I've endured being raped for almost 50 years for my court to be safe from some monster, and you almost ruined that in one instant. Do you know how hard it is to keep your mind on the woman torturing you when she can read it?" Rhys seethed.
"How is that in any way, shape, or form my fault? Did I ask for the Cauldron to make us mates? No. Did I ask for my family to be in a bad situation which caused me to make decisions that led up to this point? No. So don't try to pinpoint your self-victim blaming on me, I had no control over that. I didn't even know about any of that until I crossed the wall!" Feyre remarked, becoming angrier with every sentence.
"Let me finish. When you came Under the Mountain, you were screwing with my enemy that betrayed me and killed my family. After Amarantha was killed, the mating bond snapped into place, and at that point I was basically a blind fool walking around seeking the love I thought I would never have. Once I did have that, all it took was for you to be hurt somehow to drive me crazy. At the end of the recent war, I died because of you. I died because you weren't strong enough to fix the Cauldron despite having powers from all the courts. I realized how weak I've been for the past 500 years and you made me weaker than ever. That's why I'm pissed. All you've done is make men fall in love with you while whispering sweet promises of opening your legs to them and you got what you wanted. You're worse than Ianthe." Rhys yelled at Feyre.
"You're proving my point, prick. All that crap about the loving me because of the mating bond isn't something I can control. I can't control how you feel about me and I certainly can't control what fate makes you feel. Also, you must've reached some low point in your psyche to think that you died because of me, you died repairing the Cauldron for Prythian. You died so everyone could have a better future, better than what Hybern would've done with it." Feyre snarled at Rhys, daring to move closer.
"I should've never helped you Under the Mountain. I wouldn't be here right now." Rhys spoke calmly.
"You're right, you wouldn't be here right now, you'd still be Under the Mountain being Amarantha's whore for nothing. She would've found out about the Inner Circle soon enough and then she would've truly destroyed everything you cared about. I'm the whole reason why nobody on this continent is in shambles or ashes right now. You're such a mess you can never make up your mind and I still fell in love with you despite that, because clearly nobody else wanted to deal with it. You being a mess is why your mother and sister died, you clearly couldn't keep your mouth shut, because if you never told Tamlin where they were, they'd still be alive. You being a mess is why you were Amarantha's whore for almost 50 years, you should've known to never drink at a party being hosted by a woman who comes from the land that thrived off slavery. This isn't you, Rhys. Not even Tamlin would be doing what you're doing right now." Feyre confessed to Rhys, inches away from his face.
"She has quite the tongue, doesn't she High Lord? I never knew such cutting edge words could fall off one's lips." Keir eloquently spoke.
"That she does, Keir. She must get it from her older sister. Anyways, are you done with your rant? We can get this show on the road." Rhys muttered in a killing calm.
Before Feyre could interject again, she was suddenly brought to her knees. She could feel Rhys's talons scraping along her mental shields, the sensation vibrating down to her very core. Feyre could also feel his darkness taking the form of talons and gripping her throat. She struggled to breath in, breath out, breath in, and breath out. She was gasping for air, which was hard, not only because Rhys's talons held her throat in a vice grip capable of killing, the vibrations from the talons against her mental shields made her lungs shudder out each particle of air that reached it. Feyre kicked out her legs, trying to stop the pain, trying to stop her life from fleeing away, but most importantly, trying to stop the tell-tale signs of her weakness by her reddening face.
"It doesn't feel nice, huh? Suddenly having the life sucked out of you like the mating bond did to me when it snapped into place." Rhys peered into Feyre's hurt eyes, meeting them with a coldness that Nesta would approve of.
"I don't think this will feel nice either." Rhys smirked before the true pain began.
Feyre stilled. The talons around her throat slightly loosened, but returned again with a vengeance. The talons ripped across her throat, starting from her left ear and trailing all the way down to her right shoulder, painfully. Her crimson blood oozed behind the markings slowly, as if it was in a trance. Feyre compared the searing pain to when she died Under the Mountain, the only difference is that nothing and nobody would save her. Her fae healing that she relied on was practically nothing, it barely managed to make a mark before Rhys would drag the talons back again. Rhy dragged talons up and down, like Feyre's relationships, her life, in bid so that the scars would stay permanent, like Clotho's.
Feyre couldn't help but start screaming in misery. Not only was her mate emotionally and physically hurting her, nobody could come help her bail out of this ordeal, and she was afraid that her fighting spirit couldn't help either, for it had been damaged and repaired too many times. When Rhys finally relented his talons across Feyre's mind and throat, he smiled at his work.
He left three aggressive and brutal scars running from her ear to her shoulder. They were thick scars also, making it all the more painful. Feyre's fae healing was working very slowly at patching up the scars, and it wasn't patching them up well, because it seemed like someone tried to do basic stitching.
These scars didn't only leave behind much work to do, it left a broken soul too. The second Rhysand's talons relented from her throat, her fight and her soul relented also. They ceased to exist and only left a numb presence and tears in their wake.
Rhysand deemed that Feyre's suffering wasn't enough, because he decided to take a model after Clotho and damaged Feyre's precious ring finger also. He kept breaking the finger while he used his darkness to heal it, rendering it useless. Feyre screamed, but eventually clamped her mouth shut, because if she was going to suffer and lose herself, she was going down without giving them the satisfaction of her screams. Rhys seemed to notice this also and started twisting her ring finger in different directions. He was a clever one, that Rhys.
Rhys stopped and let Feyre grasp her now limp finger. He left her finger in a zig-zag, going up and down unnaturally, with a bluish-purple coloration. In addition, he left the ring on her demolished finger. The ring that his mother created an elaborate suicide for the one girl who was worthy of him. It was as if he kept that ring on her finger, so it will never come off, but will forever remind Feyre of what he's done, what it represented then and now, and what she lost.
Rhys was about to speak when the door to the throne room opened. Feyre didn't even glance at the door, she knew whoever walked through them weren't there to help her, they were there to either watch or contribute to the show. Feyre just let her tears mix in with her blood as she looked at her crooked finger, and hoped that either her suffering would end soon or the Mother will let her cross to the other side feeling no pain. Though, through that door walked in the rest of the Inner Circle (though Amren wasn't present) that saw their High Lady bleeding on the floor, and their High Lord on his throne with a blank look void of emotion.
"What is the meaning of this, Rhysand?" Mor asked in a lethally calm voice, angered that her High Lady and good friend was injured by his doing.
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm breaking Feyre Cursebreaker." Rhys replied in a monotonous voice, like he stated the obvious.
"I can clearly see what you're doing. What I'm really asking is why you're doing it." Mor snapped back.
"Everyone has a weakness, Morrigan. Just like how you can't stand being near your father, Keir, or Eris, or how our wandering Cassian still doesn't know where his worked-to-death mother was buried, and how Azriel was kept in darkness for his childhood and was burned by his half-brothers and stepmother when they all wanted entertainment. How scared are you right now, Morrigan? You just shrivel up inside when Keir or Eris is near, but you still put on that phony facade of being strong. I'm just getting rid of my weakness, that's all, before it can kill me again." Rhys explained.
"What does Feyre have to do with your weakness? Feyre isn't weak and I know you aren't either. You're not the strongest High Lord in Prythian for nothing. You think that Feyre killed you because she wasn't powerful enough to fix the Cauldron? You know that if you kill her, if you were to die again, she is the only one in power from the Night Court that will be able to revive you with the other six High Lords. And judging from last time, outside of Helion, they were all very reluctant to revive you." Cassian stated blatantly with a grim expression on his face.
"You act like I don't know that, Cassian. If that weren't true and I wanted Feyre dead, she would be already. I would just have to crush her mind in her sleep, I mean technically she is sleeping with the enemy." Rhys said.
"This isn't you, Rhys. If you were really mad, you could've gone to Rita's with Cassian and I, or get drunk." Azriel stated quietly.
"I guess I'm just mad and bored, and I guess Feyre just happened to be the perfect toy I could play with for the moment. I still don't feel a thrill in my veins, so I guess Feyre will stay my toy until I'm satisfied." Rhys sighed, with his chin resting on his wrist.
Rhys sat up and a dark gleam visibly glossed over his violet eyes. Rhys lifted his hands up, ready to swing them back and forth and move Feyre like a rag doll, but was stopped in his tracks. He was stopped by Cassian and Azriel charging for him, hurt and fury swimming in their eyes and pushing the heels of their feet to go faster.
"Stop." Rhys barked at Cassian and Azriel, and also at Mor, who was reaching a Feyre on the brink of passing out.
Cassian and Azriel still charged for him, their siphons gleaming in anticipation. It was Cassian who went for the opening strike and punched Rhys across the face. Rhys stood up and kicked Cassian in the shins, but it clearly didn't damper him, as Cassian just moved to tackle Rhys to the ground. Rhys, who at first dodged the move, couldn't dodge Azriel's move, which was pushing Truth-Teller into his side. Rhys clutched his side and let out a growl of anger.
"Trying to kill your High Lord, Azriel? That is the highest form of treason, though I won't stop you. Keep going because it'll give me more of a reason not to give a shit when I punish you severely later." Rhys snarled at him.
"You know how Truth-Teller works, Rhys. If I was trying to kill you, I would've aimed for your heart and hit. Also, it's not treason if I'm hurting you to defend my High Lady."Azriel whispered into Rhys's ear.
"She is no High Lady and I'll show you that by destroying her throne first." Rhys stated and Feyre's throne suddenly fell and disintegrated into pitch black dust.
Rhys moved to punch Azriel, who already anticipated his move and started to move out the way, when Cassian gripped his arm, whipped him around, and moved to give Rhys a headbutt. Though, Rhys, done with this fiasco, just grabbed Cassian and Azriel and pushed them into darkness.
"What did you do?!" Mor exclaimed in shock and anger, ready to go pummel Rhys to the ground and submission if Cassian and Azriel couldn't do the same.
"Calm down, I just winnowed them to the House of Wind. They'll live to see another day, though they won't escape unscathed once I get my hands on them." Rhys calmly explained, dusting invisible dust off of him.
Rhys walked up to where Feyre was and Mor stepped in front of her, ready to defend her High Lady because she clearly wasn't in a good state to do so herself. When Rhys reached them, he laughed at Mor's stance and stepped beside her, grabbed Feyre forcibly, and threw her in front of the dais and all the citizens of the Court of Nightmares. Rhys then grabbed a resisting Mor that was trying to reach Feyre, and winnowed her out of Hewn City, the Court of Nightmare's home, and was not far behind himself.
Keir walked up to Feyre with a wicked grin on his face.
"Well, what do we have here? A former High Lady and whore? Must be my lucky day. While Rhysand may rule us and the entirety of the Night Court, when he's not here, I'm the one in charge. Bring her to the dungeons, boys!" Keir said while snapping his fingers, laughing at her pitiful form.
Two buff men emerged from the crowd and pulled Feyre up to her feet roughly. She was barely conscious and almost let herself slip into the oblivion that was calling her. But she wouldn't let that oblivion lull her into unconsciousness, she needed every precious moment awake to show this dreaded court that they will not have the one up on her. They will not have the satisfaction that they, their ruler, destroyed her.
When she was shoved into that dark, frigid prison cell and it was clear that nobody would come for at least a little while, that extinguished hope of someone saving her sparked and became aflame.
Feyre jolted awake when she heard steps reaching her cell. When she rose from her crouched sleeping position, she met Keir's face that stared greedily on the other side of the bars. Keir pulled out a jumble of keys and slid the one to her cell into the lock. Keir opened the door to her cell and walked in, closing it behind him. As Keir reached closer to her, Feyre got up and prepared herself to fight, though Keir was already steps before her process of thinking.
Keir pulled out shackles that were hidden underneath his clothing and strapped them on to her legs and arms, chaining her to the wall. Feyre suddenly felt more powerless than before. The shackles felt like they were pulling her powers that were in reach away from her, felt like they were shredding, stripping her very life essence away like it was a toy. They also brought on a new wave of intense pain in her neck, the shackles ripping away her fae healing also. Feyre knew that only two things could effectively harm and limit fae, especially High Fae: ash wood and faebane. Judging by the gloves on Keir's hands and the powder that surrounded her leg shackles on the floor, it was faebane.
That bastard.
Once Keir recognized what Feyre administered in her mind, he spoke, "Don't like feeling so powerless? Granted the remaining powder on the floor is a little messy, I made sure I gave you the best faebane restrainers we have."
Feyre didn't deign to reply. No words, no matter how spoken or phrased would she dare speak. She already knew she was falling apart when Rhysand hurt her. As long as she was still in the Court of Nightmares, she wouldn't allow herself to collapse into her shattered soul. Who knew what worse things these people would do if they found out how damaged she is. Feyre determined that she would let herself fall when she either died from their hands and crossed the other side, or when she was gone from this wretched place, this wretched Night Court and would never be found by the likes of them again.
"I was right to call you a whore. He used you and then discarded you, as he should've. Rhysand finally got his head out of gutter because nobody in their right mind would instate someone like you as a High Lady, but, I almost forgot that you aren't a High Lady anymore. Whores get nowhere in life and you've amazed me by how far you've reached. He broke my bones to defend you and now it's time for me to break your bones as payback." Keir smiled and started torturing Feyre.
Feyre thought that someone could never experience such excruciating pain in their life, though she was proven wrong, by her own self. The faebane that shackled her to the wall would not allow her fae healing to ease the pain, it wouldn't even allow her other powers to at least block Keir's blows. Feyre just let her mind reel to nothing as Keir continued harming her, breaking her bones. Keir eventually grew tired of earning no reaction from Feyre and left her prison cell, marching away.
Though, the mistake that would cost him his life is that he didn't lock the door.
Feyre in her stupor didn't fail to notice that Keir didn't lock the door.
If Feyre were to escape this prison cell, to escape the dungeons, it was either now or never, she couldn't afford to wait for someone to save her, because the great cost would be her dear freedom.
Feyre's first move was to remove the shackles that kept her pinned to the wall. Even though faebane was powerful, just like ash wood, it only takes an extreme force or skill, or large quantities to kill. And clearly, this amount of faebane only injured Feyre, it didn't kill her, meaning that she could use what Keir failed to do, and get out of them.
Summoning her fire powers from the Autumn court to burn the powder surrounding her leg shackles was hell itself. Though summoning her ice powers to freeze the shackles on her body so they can form cracks, and then summoning her water powers to fill those cracks so the shackles would break was death itself. Feyre never thought that somebody could experience death so much but never actually die. Oh yes, immortality never gets dull.
When the shackles finally broke and they fell to the floor with a great thud, Feyre noticed another one of Keir's mistakes. Feyre wasn't doubting that there were guards somewhere else in the dungeons, especially the exit, but if Keir was truly smart, he would've placed guards either in front of or next to her cell, or somewhere nearby. Leaving a High Fae with gifts from all courts and a High Lady unguarded? Rookie mistake.
Standing up and moving was a struggle that Feyre encountered one too many times. She could feel each broken part of her, but at least her fae healing was doing something and healing what it could, despite it being very, very slow. Feyre kept thinking that if she truly wanted to leave, she would have to ignore her wounds for now and keep moving before Keir remembered what he forgot to do. Feyre wasn't going to risk detection by opening the door herself, so she simply winnowed outside of her cell. Feyre was limping quietly around the dungeons, trying to find an exit, when she heard a pair of footsteps reaching her direction.
Feyre pressed herself into the wall and blended into the shadows cast from the lights overhead. It was a pair of guards whispering quietly among themselves, heading down the path she came from. While they passed her, Feyre caught a snippet of their conversation.
"Can't you believe that the High Lady of the court is down here? She was disowned and humiliated by the High Lord in front of everybody. I heard she got some pretty gruesome injuries too." One of the guards spoke.
"To think that we never would've known about this. Those pompous bastards planned on keeping that incident to themselves and using it as an inside joke, as if the rest of the world wouldn't have found out one way or another. Keir must be real high and mighty if he trusted that court to keep their mouths shut about their High Lady in the dungeons compared to us, the ones going to lock her cell. How can you forget to do something so crucial?" The other guard replied.
"He probably only trusted us to lock the cell because he knows he would have our heads. He would have our heads if the secret that the great Keir forgot to lock the cell of his strongest prisoner was revealed to the public. That doesn't sound mighty, in fact it's embarrassing." The guard laughed.
Feyre panicked. Keir didn't forget about her, he was sending his guards to go lock the doors. She didn't have much time to escape, before those guards reached her cell and would go run to Keir saying that it was empty. Once she deemed they were far enough from her, Feyre made herself visible and used her shape shifting gifts from Tamlin to take on the appearance of a guard. After running around for a few more minutes, Feyre found a door that looked promising to be the exit.
And promising it was. When Feyre opened the door, it led to the room where everything began. Unfortunately for her, Keir was close to the door when she walked through it and glared at her. Shit. She was doomed now.
"Did you two do what I asked?" Keir asked in a displeasing tone.
"Yes, we did." Feyre replied and when she noticed that Keir looked expectant and disgusted, she quickly added a "your greatness" to her words.
"Well, where is the key and where is the other one I sent you with?" Keir came closer to her and whispered.
Feyre looked straight ahead in this foreign body and replied, "The prisoner was demanding for us to set them free as a person in their position, but we refused. He told me to go tell you that the job is done. He should be on his way with the key soon."
"Great. I have a surprise for the little bitch in the morning. Ignore that though, use the center doors and go back to your guard duty outside." Keir grinned and returned back to his conversation.
Feyre followed Keir's word for the first and only time, and walked through the center doors which led to the entrance that Feyre was so excited to see. Feyre knew that entrance, she used it every time she came to this corrupt place. Feyre's was close to the entrance when her fae ears picked up on yelling.
"The prisoner has escaped their cell! When we arrived, it was empty!" One of the guards yelled.
"Then who the hell did I just talk to? Wasn't it you that told me the prisoner was locked in their cell?" Keir seethed.
"No, that wasn't me." The guard replied in a confusing tone.
"That was the prisoner! Go catch her!" The other guard screamed.
"You don't give orders when I'm in front of you. I just let that prisoner go outside thinking it was you, now make me not kill you both and bring them back, dead or alive."Keir threatened.
The second Feyre heard the yelling, she cursed her injuries and damned all her cares and didn't hesitate to dash out the entrance, startling the other guards in the area that strangely didn't move. The guards stayed in place because they knew that helping Feyre would be no use because she would be caught nonetheless, or if they did help, they would be signing their own death warrant. Feyre was so close to the edge when the two guards from earlier appeared outside, Keir not far behind. Keir barked orders for them to catch the "guard" fleeing and to fire anything to catch them, whether the body is breathing or not.
Feyre summoned her Illyrian wings and readied her legs to jump. Just as her wings were about to complete its first flap, an ash wood arrow lodged into her shoulders. From her many arduous lessons from Azriel, she knew that having a shoulder injury and flying did not mix well. But Feyre was this close to being free from the vile Court of Nightmares and everyone on the ground knew it also. That's why when Feyre slumped and starting falling to the ground, she made her wings flap harder and get her farther from the arms of torture, for she knew that the next time they were going to shoot an ash arrow, it wouldn't miss the target of her heart. As if the Mother could sense Feyre's suffering and wanted to end it, the wind pushed in the direction she was going in, not to help her fly faster and easier, but to encourage her and show her opponents that it takes much more to kill someone who longs to be free.
And so Feyre escaped the dungeons under the Court of Nightmares and she flew as fast as she could despite her injuries. Feyre escaped the reach of the Court and was flying in what she knew was the Night Court. She didn't want to be detected by anyone from the Night Court or any of the other courts, so she flew over the water outside of the borders. Feyre flew far, far away from the place she called home, the place that betrayed her. She flew all the way to the mortal lands, below the wall, and into the lands that were across from Prythian. No, she didn't fly to Hybern, she flew to the mortal lands below Montesere, Vallahan, and Rask. She flew past those landmarks and towards the overbearing woods, which she realized were near Scythia. Feyre landed in a tree that seemed decent for hiding so she can heal for the time being.
When Feyre made herself comfortable, she blocked all routes into her mind and let her new journey begin.