I awoke to a sunlit room. It took three short blinks before I could tear my eyes open to the wave of warm light. I could feel each sinew of muscle, each vertebrae in my spine ache under my efforts to turn my head. The largest wall of the room was mostly a window, looking out at winter-kissed garden with an empty stone fountain at its center. I could hear the crackling of a small hearth fire on my other side, but couldn't muster the strength to tear my neck the other direction.

My neck.

It came back to me then. My broken neck. My death.

I was dead, yet somehow, here I was.

Alive.

Alive because of my self-named Amulet of Storms.

I lifted a fragile hand to the blanket pulled up to my chest, unsure if its wild shaking was from the pain or the fear at what I might see beneath. The cream quilt was heavy in my fingers, but I managed to pull it away to reveal my naked torso, covered only by a bandage wrapped around my chest like a second skin.

"I couldn't heal you."

If I hadn't already felt near-death, then the panic of hearing the voice of a stranger so close to me without my knowing had definitely done its best to get me there. But it wasn't a stranger's voice, not exactly. I'd heard the voice before.

In a dream.

Amren? I tried to say, but when I parted my lips to speak only breathless air escaped.

"You're extremely weak and your healing is slow," she said, stepping around the bed to come into my line of sight. I would never have told her, but I couldn't have been more grateful for her recognizing my weakness. "None of us could heal you. We even called in a professional healer… There was nothing we could do."

I let that sink in. Was I actually dying? She had said my recovery was slow. Did that mean I was recovering, just slowly, or did that mean I was recovering too slow. That I wasn't going to recover at all.

"I'm… I'm sorry," she whispered, and her eyes of wild silver lightning met mine. I got the feeling she hadn't said those words in centuries. Her eyes were settled, brows a tiny bit down on her face. She was sad. Sad for me.

I tried to speak again. "Wha-" was all I got out before weak breathy coughs overtook me. I was dying. I had to be dying.

"The heirloom - the amulet - its imbedded itself in your heart."

My coughing stopped. The air in the room suddenly felt far, far away.

"It's keeping you alive. Pumping your blood. But even more than that," she cleared her throat quickly, coming closer to the head of the bed. "It's changed your blood, changed your essence. You've become something else."

I felt my lip trembling, my ribs shaking with a sudden anxious cold.

"We can't remove it or you'll die."

My eyes travelled back down to the exposed bandages across my breasts, nearly up to my collarbone. I looked back to Amren, hoping she understood my silent plea.

She did.

With small, nimble fingers she reached for a piece of fabric tucked into the folds of the dressing and pulled it back to reveal the place where smooth skin should be covering my beating heart. The place where ribs and breastbone should be. The place that now homed a gem buried deep into the cavern of my chest. It was still for the first time that I'd ever seen, its color now the darkest black. Darker than the strange shadows that followed Azriel. Darker still than the consuming night that Rhysand left in his wake with every step.

Rhysand.

My eyes shot to Amren's and somehow she understood.

"He's dealing with business today - of course the first day he leaves your side you wake up." I started to wonder if she had the same gifts of the mind as my mate. "I've already sent word to him that you're conscious. I'm sure he'll be here shortly," she added.

At the idea of him coming I remembered the bond, then panicked that I hadn't felt him yet. I hadn't felt the cord within me since I'd woken and just as the swell of emotions began filling my chest, ready to drown me, I felt it. Somewhere beneath all the pain, there it was.

The cord was taut.

And then he was there, standing next to Amren, towering over her tiny frame.

Then he was crashing to his knees, bent over the bed, his face inches from mine.

"Feyre," he whispered.

Rhysand, I cried out through the bond.

His eyes misted and I was once again awed by the depth of the mating bond. This being - this male - was my partner, my friend, and supposedly, my equal.

I'm here, he replied silently just as Amren decided this would be the ideal time to exit from the room.

I can't… I can't talk. I tried to stay strong, to keep myself from mirroring his misty eyes, but everything was starting to feel so heavy. I felt one tear streak down my face to fall into my pillow. Everything hurts.

Feyre, he repeated. You saved us all. And you… you died.

The soft sob he choked on broke me into a million pieces.

Mate, was all I could think to say. My mate…

I can let you rest, he sent back to me through the bond. I can make you sleep the pain away for however long you want. For as long as it takes.

I considered. How long has it been already?

He cringed a bit. Five days.

Five days. I had slept for nearly a week and yet I still felt like my neck was broken only hours ago. I could feel the ache of the new blood - the black blood I'd watched spill from the amulet as it dove deep into the cavern of my body - now forcing its way through my too thin veins. I could feel the strain of each muscle, every string pulling and growing, realigning.

My body was changing, morphing. And the idea of not knowing what I was becoming scared me more than anything.

I stared into the violet eyes of my mate that said so many things, calling out to whatever soul might still be residing inside this broken flesh. Things I knew we shouldn't be ready to say or even think. Yet I couldn't help but think my eyes might be mirroring all those feelings right back to him.

And maybe I was afraid of that too.

Thoughts of seeing Mor and Azriel, even Cassian, after what happened… Of seeing my sisters again.

Of Tamlin.

I was going to puke.

Tragically, Rhys pulled a pan from the bedside table as my body started heaving. He held my face up as I messily emptied the clear nothings that were in my stomach. That pan had already been sitting there. This wasn't the first time he'd helped me puke from my place as a vegetable in this bed.

I hated the idea of being stuck here.

Put me to sleep, I sent to Rhysand down our bond. I want to sleep until I can get up. I don't want to be trapped in this bed.

He watched me for a while longer and I could feel the words bubbling inside him as he kept retracting the idea of saying whatever it was that he wanted to tell me. And just as I was about to tell him to just fess up, the weight of my exhaustion hit me in full force.

I fell asleep staring into the deep, deep blue eyes of my mate.

When I awoke for the second time there was a weight on my chest. For a brief second, sheer terror flooded me, thinking something was wrong with my stone for a heart. But a quick look to my side and I saw the cause.

Rhysand was passed out beside me, laying flat on his stomach.

Wings outstretched.

One of them covered me like an extra blanket.

I remembered the claws I'd seen him summon before and wondered if there was more to the beast within my mate.

My mate.

I doubted that would ever grow old.

Would I?

Would I ever grow old with my new heart of dark magic?

I decided to let that thought go. There were at least ten horribly morose things I could be thinking about including that, but instead I decided to watch Rhysand sleep next to me. He wasn't dressed like the Dark Lord, like I'd only ever seen him dress before. His black finery was replaced with the loose under-fittings of something much more casual. Behind him, on the floor near the door, I spotted the fighting gear, the leathers and the weapons he'd discarded before flopping into bed beside me.

Had he slept with me every night? Had he been waiting for me to wake up again, slowly converting this room into his own?

Warmth flooded me and I felt the bond awaken, stretch, and groan within me.

I looked to Rhysand's closed eyes, nearly completely covered by his blue-black hair that had grown since the last time I'd seen him.

I tested a few of my muscles. Still a little sore, but nothing in comparison to the agony I'd felt the first time I'd awoken to Amren. As gently as I could, I slid myself out from under my mate's wing, letting myself ease down onto the floor before feeling safe to try and stand. I reached for the bedside table, steadying myself before rising.

Much more easily than I'd been expecting.

I padded softly to the door and turned the knob as slowly and quietly as I could, doing my best not to disturb my High Lord.

I entered a hall garnished with chandeliers of swirled, colored glass, illuminating the few polished doors on either side. I wandered, wondering if there were others in this house, behind those doors. I spied a wide oak staircase, only then realizing I wasn't on the ground floor of wherever I was. At the bottom I stepped onto ornate red carpet that cushioned my every step. The warm, wood panelled walls surrounded the two rooms I could see: a sitting room with a black marble fireplace, lots of comfortable, elegant, but worn furniture, and bookshelves built into every wall, and then a dining room with a long, cherrywood table big enough for ten people.

With two seats occupied.

Two males sat in chairs pushed far enough away from the table that they could jump to their feet in an instant if need be. They were both in the same fighting gear that littered the floor of my room upstairs. They both had the same tanned skin I'd noticed on Rhysand this morning - the skin that was pale when I'd known him Under the Mountain. They both had the same dark hair, though one was long and one was short. And they were both instantly recognizable.

I was frozen in place, remembering the last place I'd seen them.

On their knees before me as Amarantha demanded I kill them with an ash blade.

The way Rhysand had lost his mind upon seeing Amarantha had captured his friends… He was entirely prepared to give his life to defend them, to have saved their lives he would gladly have given his own.

The bond ached in my chest at the idea of it, both with love and unending sorrow.

Cassian snored softly, interrupting my reverie, and when I looked to him, Azriel was staring directly at me.

"I should get Rhys," he said, and though his voice was hushed, Cassian blinked beside him, turning to his friend before noticing that the attention was on me.

"Don't," I said. "He's sleeping. I don't want to wake him." Then I noticed the wings on their backs, so similar to the ones Rhys had. Was that a power special to the Night Court? I'd have to ask Rhys about it later.

"I can promise you, he'd much rather we wake him to see you." Cassian stretched his arms up and behind his head, knocking off a yawn before adding, "I mean, you're awake."

"How long?" I asked.

Cassian looked to Azriel, as if looking for a soft answer, but the shorter haired fae simply said, "Over a month."

A month. I'd been asleep for more than a month. I'd missed a month of my life. A month of recovering from the gem implanted in my chest.

You've become something else, Amren had said.

Would I be different now? A different person? Had I truly died Under the Mountain and this life was only as good as a ghost of my old self?

I couldn't even count the amount of burdens I felt mounted on my shoulders. My death. This evil stone. I could feel its weight pumping through me, its blood coursing through my veins. The idea of my unknown mortality. My left behind sisters. Lucien - where was Lucien now?

Tamlin. I couldn't think about Tamlin. About what he'd done.

About what I had done.

What I couldn't undo.

And then, somehow, the most and least complicated of all my problems: the mating bond.

What I felt for that male upstairs in my bed…

I didn't believe there was a word for it, not after what we'd gone through. What we'd fought for - together.

But then it was all so new. So permanent.

How well did we really know each other?

Cassian and Azriel were staring at me, I realized, and I fumbled for something to say. Something that wasn't as heavy as everything else I was thinking of.

But it was Cassian who broke the silence before me.

"Can I ask to see it, or is that weird?"

I laughed, but then realized I'd come downstairs in nothing but thin, comfortable coral pants that cuffed at my ankles and a fresh bandage just like the one I'd had on when Amren had showed me the Amulet of Storms in its new home, inside me.

They kept looking at me, Azriel like he was about to tell me not to - that it was inappropriate. But they'd risked their lives for me, faced Amarantha with me when they didn't even know me.

I pulled down the top of the fabric bandage just low enough to show how my skin had healed perfectly around the rough edges of the stone - so black it looked like infinite emptiness.

There was no hesitation when Cassian said, "Thank you." And I knew he wasn't talking about showing him the stone.

I trembled at the thought that these males - these strangers - were now my family. That we'd all nearly died together. That Rhys…

He'd become everything so quickly.

Too quickly?

I wasn't sure if I'd have the time to find out.

And as if hearing my every thought down the bond, he appeared. I could feel him behind me even as his entrance was entirely silent. Cassian and Azriel both straightened in their seats, perhaps even showing a drop of fear at being in my semi-naked presence when I was the mate of their High Lord.

I turned around to face him, the stone still exposed to the air of the room around me. I could feel its presence, both in my bones and blood, and in the air as it was given exposure, potentially for the first time in months. Rhysand was unabashedly in his underthings he was sleeping in, gawking at me. His face molded into something between pain and fervor as his eyes surveyed every inch of my body, lingering on the gem that now replaced my heart.

"I'm sorry," I said as Azriel and Cassian made their swift exit. "I didn't want to wake-"

He filled the space between us in less than a second and wrapped his arms around me in a way I realized we'd never experienced before. I felt so many things for this male, for my mate, yet we had never even felt the full embrace of one another. Perhaps once, in a rushed moment in my prison cell. But this… This was nothing like that. It was like I'd been made to fit against him, like our bodies fit together instantly. The bond warmed into slow burning embers as I reached my arms up around his neck, nuzzling my face into his chest. His touch was firm, but gentle and I hoped the feeling that I was breakable would go away for the both of us someday.

And despite every fear, every burden…

I was ready to see where this bond would take us.

Author's Note: So sorry for the long wait! I had to find the time to reread ACOMAF while taking enough notes to build the timeline for "Act 2" of this story. There is still plenty to be done here, and I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my writings. Feel free to review with your opinions! Xoxoxo Jordan