Chapter 2

I yanked up my hands. Black talons, ending in flame, sprouted from my ice kissed fingertips. It was chaos, light and dark, ice and fire. The bile rising up my throat froze. Then melted. I tasted ash. Rapping around my wrist, my entire form, were strands of night, whirls of black and stars and darkness. The blueish chains holding me nullified nothing. They shattered with half a thought as I roared, springing to Rhys, clawing out the ash. It wouldn't kill him. It wasn't his heart. At the same time I found myself feeding him my blood before turning to the monsters behind.

I shook violently upon waking.

"You need to learn to control your powers," Rhys drawled from across the room. That empty, aching pit inside of me caved in a bit. I did need to learn to control these newfound pieces of me, these voices that roared and screamed and whined.

"The voices- was that the first time you heard them yesterday?" He asked. It's been a day. The sounds were real. It wasn't a nightmare.

"You can hear them?" My voice was tired.

"Yes, I can hear them when… When they go out of control. That's your powers telling you to let them out." His voice was a midnight caress as he surveyed my body. I looked around the room, surprised to find an armchair next to the bed, a quilt covering it. Rhys must've slept here. "You didn't answer my question."

I was too tired to lie, and he had saved my useless hide. "No, but it was the loudest." It was the truth, just not all of it.

As if in response, the voices- my powers, acted up again. Let us out. We will help you, give you purpose. Let us out. Let us out. Let us out, the voices in my head roared in unison. I lowered my head into my hands, trying to shush them.

Rhys was thoughtful for a moment. "Do you have an answer to my offer?" He asked.

No, I didn't. But… I couldn't work with him. Not now, with everything going on right now.

"I'm not going to work with you," I said quietly.

He met my gaze, sorrow and fear and anger in his violet eye. It all vanished a soon as it came. "I'll be gone during the week. The house is yours. Send word if you need anything," A rustle of invisible wings, and he was gone.

I took the time to ponder the nightmare, and I couldn't think of anything besides horrification.

~Ω~

Rhys returned at the end of the week. It had passed by in a blur, and I had taken to situating myself in one of the pretty little patios, reading in the large armchair that must've been built to accommodate wings. The palace was warm and open- so open that I didn't rush to the bathroom when I was startled awake in the middle of the night.

A perfect place for a High Lord that had wings, and loved to fly, I supposed. And it was nice, the joyful quiet.

I had just finished a chapter in the book I was reading- The Rose Society - when Rhys slid between the chairs with two plates of food in his hands.

The woman who'd hurtled a bone-spear at Amarantha… I didn't know where she was anymore. Perhaps she vanished the day her neck snapped and faerie immortality filled her veins.

"Since you seem hell-bent on the sedentary lifestyle," He said- when had I last eaten? "I thought I'd go one step further and bring your food to you."

My stomach was already twisting with hunger, and I closed the book, lowering it into my lap. "Thank you."

A short laugh. "Thank you? Not 'High Lord and servant?' Or: 'Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.'" He clicked his tongue. "How disappointing."

I set down the book and extended a hand for the plate. He could listen to himself talk all day, but I wanted to eat. Now.

My hand had almost grazed the rim of the plate when it just slid away.

I reached again. Once more, a tendril of his power yanked the plate further back.

"Let me help you, Feyre," He said. "Tell me what to do to help you."

Rhys kept the plate just beyond reach. He spoke again, and as if the words tumbling loosened his grip on his power, talons of smoke curled over his fingers and great wings of shadow spread from his back. "Months and months, and you're still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Do any of you care?" He spit the question again.

He did care. Tamlin did care. Perhaps too much. "He's giving me the space to sort it out," I breathed. I barely recognized my voice.

"Let me help you," Rhys said. "We went through enough Under the Mountain-"

I flinched, sinking back into the chair.

"She wins." He breathed, terror lacing every word. "That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart."

I wondered if he'd been telling himself that for months now, wondered if he, too, had moments when his own memories sometimes suffocated him deep in the night.

But I lifted the book, firing two words down the bond between us before hauling up the best shields I could. They weren't very strong.

Conversation over.

"Like hell it is," he snarled. A thrum of power caressed my hands. My nails dug into the leather and paper- to no avail.

Bastard. Arrogant, presuming bastard.

The voices started again.

And for the first time, I welcomed them.

Out out out out out out out! They screamed.

Ice flew across the floor.

Froze the legs of the chairs.

Froze the table

Froze like my dark, crumbling heart.

I growled, the book crumbling in my ice talons as I squeezed, and I looked down at what I'd done in horrification. I looked up.

No ice had touched Rhys, and somehow I knew, deep inside me, that it was me who saved him from sure-death at the cold and merciless hands of my ice.

~Ω~