Consciousness found Rhys and all he could see around him was impenetrable darkness. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Feyre's voice, distressed and frantic, pleading. He heard her sobbing. Was she lost in the darkness too? She wasn't necessarily scared of the dark but perhaps it felt like an enclosed space to her. He tried to reach out in the direction that she had been, to his right, but absolutely nothing met his hand.
It felt like an eternity listening to Feyre sob and plead in that darkness. A long eternity where he couldn't find her in the darkness. No matter which way he moved, she wasn't there and the sobbing was always so far away. He needed to get to her, to fix whatever had caused her unhappiness, to assure her everything would be fine if they were together.
Then in the distance he spotted a pinpoint of light and he made for it. Light meant he would be able to see what was going on. Light meant he would be able to get a handle on the situation. So he went closer to it and it grew until the edges of the darkness and the light blended into gray wisps of shadow where he halted at the people he could see standing just beyond the edge of the gray in the white blinding light.
"Hello, Son," his father spoke, his voice oddly distant as he placed an arm around Rhys' mother and placed the other hand on Rhys' sister's shoulder. They were exactly as he had last remembered them. His father's hair was turning silver and his violet eyes were lined with wrinkles from long days at the office. His mother's dark skin was offset by her bright hazel eyes. Her dark hair was pinned back, showing the proud planes of her face with her high cheekbones and full lips. His sister had only been sixteen when she had died, and she was an exact copy of his mother.
"Am I dead?" Rhys asked looking back at the blackness. He had always heard people describe death as going into the light and he had never believed them. Now he was standing at the edge of it, and he had practically run for it. Distantly in the dark he could hear Feyre's screaming his name again and again.
"Not quite," his sister smirked at him. The same smirk that he always flashed in Feyre's direction. Something they both had inherited from their father. "Apparently you couldn't even do that right." He missed her wit that she often threw right at him whether prompted or not. He missed his sister and unknowingly he took another step forward, a toe slipping into where the light met the gray. Feeling faded from that toe, feeling he wasn't even aware he had had. He halted his advance once more.
"What does this mean?" He waved around them. "Where am I?"
"You're between," his mother explained.
"You can decide," his father took over. "You can't run back that way," he gave an imperious nod to the black beyond Rhys' back. "But you can stay right where you are and see if they find some way to save you. Or you can end it now and step all the way into the light."
Rhys frowned at the toe he had placed into the light. Slowly he pulled it back into the gray. Thousands of images exploded around him. Memories of the family standing before him and memories of the family waiting for him in the land of the living. Memories of Feyre and their far too short relationship. And in a blink, it was all gone again.
"Rhysand," his mother's soft voice drew his attention back.
"I should come with you. I have missed you so much," he made to step forward but she stopped him with a shake of her head. "But you're my family…," he pleaded with her.
"You have a family. You have Morrigan, and Azriel, and that bumbling Cassian," his father replied. "And whatever drake of a human you pulled up as your damned lawyer. Piece of work, that one."
Rhys couldn't help but give a watery chuckle. He did have a family. He had his inner circle and they had done without him once, and had been pissed about it. What would they do if they got here and they found out he had chosen to die.
"And don't forget that woman wearing Mom's ring," his sister added. "She sounds awfully upset to know how close to death you are."
The words made something in the air change. Around him he could hear Feyre's voice louder though she seemed to be whispering. "Please, please don't leave me, Rhys. I need you. I can't do this alone. I need you. Please. I love you." Her voice broke and it broke something in him further. Feyre, he needed to get back to Feyre. Without realizing it, he had pulled fully back into the gray, away from his family and the light.
"Go have a life, Rhysand," his mother pressed. "Go get married, have children, and live a life. We love you."
Darkness started to overtake the gray once more and he saw his mother smile. Slowly his mother and sister faded, leaving only his father staring at him. The man had been hard on him in life but now he wished he had spent more time listening to his father.
"Don't make the same mistakes I made, Rhys. You can be a better man. Make time for your family. Don't make the mistake of believing you might always have more time." Then slowly his father faded too as the darkness reclaimed him once more along with overwhelming pain, and too many sounds to process, and the constant sound of Feyre pleading.
Then darkness overcame him once more and it was different than before. It was softer, lulling him into a place where pain didn't matter and he could simply dream.
Consciousness came back in little sensations. At first it was a constant pressure against his chest, right over his heart. Not uncomfortable, but there. Then it was the prickling of pain along the left side of his neck and shoulder. Then it was the brightness of light beyond his eyelids. Then it was sounds. A beeping, slow and steady somewhere to his right, and a clicking noise like someone typing on a keyboard across the room. Then it was a scent, a specific scent. Feyre's shampoo. He'd know that scent anywhere because he constantly buried his nose in her hair as they slept at night. It was one of the most comforting scents he could ever think of.
Slowly he reached a hand up to the pressure on his chest, realizing something was dragging along behind his hand. He felt slow, uncoordinated, but he could move and his hand connected with something round covered in something silky. He managed to crack open an eye and then the other, blinking away tears at the brightness. Then he managed to look down at his chest, at a mass of golden brown. A beautiful mass of golden brown that he recognized immediately. Feyre's hair. Which meant the comfortable pressure just over his heart was Feyre resting her head against him. She didn't stir even as he ran fingers through her hair.
Slowly he took in the room around him starting with the IV trailing from his right hand to the monitors on his right side that he recognized from Feyre's visit to the hospital. One monitored his heart in a slow, steady stream. The other monitored his brain activity as it spiked while he explored. Beyond the monitors was a room very much like the one he had spent far too long in with Feyre after Amarantha had had her. But now the positions were reversed and Feyre was half on the chair next to the bed, and half laying across him. Beyond Feyre was a table and chairs where the source of the typing noise stopped. Azriel sat there, his hazel eyes tired as he turned to look at Rhys.
"Good evening, or I guess it became morning about 10 minutes ago," he spoke quietly, likely because Feyre was asleep. Azriel's eyes went to her after a moment and then he stood to come adjust a blanket that had fallen from Feyre's shoulders.
"What happened?" Rhys asked knowing Azriel would give it to him straight. His voice was gravelly from disuse and he felt an odd pull at his neck when he spoke.
"The short version is you were shot through the driver's window and then crashed your car," Azriel explained.
"What's the long version?" Rhys demanded. There were far too many details missing from the short version. He needed that information to try and piece together what had all happened. He had been shot? They had still been well onto the Illyrian reservation where no one owned guns. They used bows and arrows for distance fighting and hunting. Spears still for close range hunting. And wicked knives and swords for close range combat. Guns were considered a cop-out.
"The Mother and the Cauldron must want you alive," Azriel started. "You managed to crash your car just on the edge of where you can get minimal cell phone service. Feyre called me after everything frantic. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what had exactly happened. All she knew was something had broken your window and you had crashed the two of you into a bunch of trees. You were unconscious and bleeding quite a bit from your neck, apparently the bullet nicked the artery. Feyre held it together exceptionally well all things considered and followed my instructions to staunch the bleeding while Cassian went with Thesan's emergency helicopter team to locate the two of you. It's a good thing you were on a main road. It made you easy to spot. Cassian said the medical team confirmed it had been a bullet that had broken the window and hit you, and that you should have been very dead." The glazed look in Azriel's eyes told Rhys enough about how he felt on that matter.
"Not like I intended to get shot where no one owns guns, Az," Rhys complained.
"Oh, we know," Azriel grumbled. "I doubt you'll be able to have your honeymoon without Cassian though. He's the one who had to deal with Feyre once the helicopter made it to Dawn Medical. I don't know who was more of a wreck after, especially when your heart did stop in the helicopter."
Instinct had Rhys wanting to pull Feyre closer but he couldn't. He knew he didn't have the strength to pull her onto the bed. He had put her through so much unintentionally. "So what's the damage then?" Rhys asked.
"Well, you're down a car and quite a bit of blood," Azriel told him practically. "You're also likely going to be missing some freedom for a while as I truly doubt you're going to be left by yourself any time soon."
"Cassian or Feyre?" Rhys asked knowing his brother was just as clingy as Feyre might be. He could understand on both fronts.
"Both," Azriel replied with a quiet smile. Rhys pulled a face. He loved both of them, very differently, but the two of them hounding him together would be beyond unbearable. "Cassian has guards on the door here, mostly because Thesan allowed it to keep Cassian from moving into the room."
Rhys nodded his understanding and then reached a hand up to the left side of his neck. There was a bandage along the side of his neck going down to his shoulder. Under the bandage he could feel pain at the contact but it was much closer to the edge of his neck than the center.
"Law enforcement, found the bullet when they searched the site. Military grade. They suggested it might have been a sniper. They will be coming around to question you at some point. We suggested it might have been Hybern, but you do have plenty of enemies. It's a miracle it didn't hit just a little to the side." Azriel explained.
"I swerved the car. I don't know what instinct kicked in but I felt something coming for the window and swerved," Rhys explained.
"And gave yourself a chance," Azriel smiled.
"I crashed the car," Rhys looked down at Feyre. "Did she get injured?"
"Bumps and bruises. Thesan confirmed it after you were settled, though he had to do it in here because she refused to leave your side. I'm a little surprised she didn't insist on going into the operating room with you," Azriel placed a hand on Feyre's shoulder.
"She did, actually," Cassian's voice came from the door. "More than insisted actually. She screamed and kicked and fought to follow after you. They were talking about sedating her. No amount of strength training ever prepared me to try and hold her back from you."
"Is there a reason the two of you are here this late?" Rhys asked when Azriel didn't look surprised at Cassian's intrusion.
"I was keeping an eye on Feyre and cutting through some of the work that has built up," Azriel looked to Cassian. "And this one was being a Mother Hen."
"I've said it probably twenty times in the past three days and I'm going to say it again. You didn't see the amount of blood on her from him. You didn't hear her screaming and pleading. And you didn't get kicked in the groin four times trying to let the doctors do their work." Cassian shook his head and shifted his stance to protect himself a little more. "And you weren't there when his heart stopped, you didn't hear that silence, or how broken Feyre sounded after they got it started again. So, I think I have the right to Mother Hen as much as I damned well want."
"So... blood loss, bullet wound," Rhys looked to Azriel.
"Concussion from the airbag," Azriel added. "All things considered, you're walking away very lucky."
"You call that lucky?" Cassian demanded.
"Considering the circumstances, yes," Azriel replied, his voice completely even.
"And what's this about an engagement?" Cassian turned his eyes back to Rhys. "Why didn't you tell us you were going to propose? We should have been there to see that!"
Rhys looked down to Feyre and to her hands where they rested against him. His eyes focused in on her left ring finger. The silver band with the star shaped sapphire was missing from her slender fingers.
"That's likely why he didn't tell you," Azriel informed Cassian. "He likely wanted some damned privacy."
"What happened to her ring?" Rhys asked, his eyes still focused in on the spot.
"Mor took it to be cleaned again. It was a little… bloody," Cassian sighed. "Why can't you two go more than a few months without giving us a damned heart attack?"
"Certainly not something I ever plan to do," Rhys reached down to stroke Feyre's hair again. "When can I go home?"
"Thesan will check on you tomorrow and give you his verdict," Azriel moved to grip Rhys' arm. "We discussed it," Azriel nodded between him and Cassian. "And we are going to stay with you until no longer needed."
"Feyre is amazing, but she can't drag your ass back to bed if needed," Cassian explained. "And Nuala and Cerridwen have to go home at some point. They can't cook all the time when you are hungry."
"If I kick you out of the house?" Rhys asked with a raised eyebrow.
"We'll just sit on the rooftop garden and wait until you get hungry again," Cassian threatened.
Anything else that might have been said was lost as Feyre shifted slightly and let out a soft moan, and not one that incited any indecent thoughts. Just someone who disliked their sleep being disrupted.
"Can you take her home to sleep in an actual bed?" Rhys asked his brothers. "As much as I like her here, she'd get much better sleep in bed." He loved having her against him but at the same time, he knew she wasn't getting good rest where she was and her back would hurt in the morning.
"She won't leave," Cassian explained. "We've tried."
"She wants to be where she can hear your heart," Azriel explained.
Rhys stopped trying to reason for her to go be comfortable. He still had a hard time sleeping if Feyre got up without him after she had been taken. He fully understood she needed some piece of mind that his heart was beating. She had heard it stop. It probably haunted her the same way the sound of her neck breaking did to him.
"Then put her up on the bed," Rhys told his brothers. "If any of the nurses argue, you can tell them I insisted. If they want to argue about it, then they can argue with me."
Cassian nodded his understanding and lifted Feyre fairly easily up onto the hospital bed on Rhys' good side. They spent a few minutes rearranging the cords until they wouldn't be pulled by any movement Feyre made, and then Azriel settled the blanket over Feyre once more.
"We'll be back in the morning," Azriel told Rhys, slinging his arm around Cassian's shoulder. Rhys watched his two brothers leave the room and then settled in to sleep, his arms around Feyre properly. She snuggled in closer to his chest and Rhys couldn't help but smile, his father's advice ringing in his ears. He would make sure Feyre was well aware she was a priority, that his family knew they were priorities. Work could wait. They could put measures in place to make things run a little more smoothly so days off were far easier to come by.
And there was something else he needed to do. It was time to improve his company's image. Reveal the truth of who they really were and get rid of the scumbags on their board. Feyre believed they could start now, so he would. As soon as he was free of the hospital he'd start planning with his family.