"What the hell happened to you?" I said, unable to contain myself for any longer. If she has changed so much in only a month she must not have been eating anything.

"Why don't you just look inside my head?" she said quietly.

That was the scariest change of all...her fire...it was gone. Her words had no bite at all.

I gave her a wink, desperate to rekindle the dead flame in her eyes. "Where's the fun in that?"

She didn't smile.

"No shoe throwing this time?"

Come on...Please play with me, I pleaded silently.

Without a word, she headed for the stairs that would take her to her room.

I could feel her slipping out of my fingers. Terrified, I grasped for an excuse to keep her with me.

"Eat breakfast with me," I said.

"Don't you have other things to deal with?"

"Of course I do," I said, brushing aside the thought of the ridiculous amount of meetings I had this week. It was consuming sometimes. I was raised a fighter—not a leader, and that unused power, that lust for battle simmered and raged under my skin as I sat in meetings with assholes I would have loved to just kill and be done with. But for my People I refrained. Always for them.

"I have so many things to deal with that I'm sometimes tempted to unleash my power across the world and wipe the board clean. Just to buy me some damned peace." I grinned, unable to resist showing off a little."But I'll always make time for you."

Thankfully, she motioned me to lead the way to that familiar glass table at the end of the hall. If she hadn't eaten soon I don't think I would have been able to stop myself from forcing her—and then i'd be no better than her coward back in Spring.

That reminded me. "I felt a spike of fear this month through our lovely bond. Anything exciting happen at the wondrous Spring Court?," I prodded.

Though I would love to think my prodding was out of selflessness—to see if she was ok—I knew it was not. Of course she was not ok. In my heart I knew I was a selfish bastard who wanted to remind her of the faults of my rival.

"It was nothing," she said, monotonically.

NOTHING? He's got her so wrapped around his little finger that she calls him blasting her out of anger NOTHING?

"If you know," she said coldly, seeing the rage in my eyes "why even ask about it?"

"Because these days, all I hear through that bond is nothing. Silence. Even with your shields up rather impressively most of the time, I should be able to feel you. And yet I don't. Sometimes I'll tug on the bond only to make sure you're still alive".

It was an effort to keep the terror out of my voice. If she heard how truly helpless it made me feel surely she'd guess what she meant to me…

I continued, ranting now. Rage was more understandable than agony.

"And then one day, I'm in the middle of an important meeting when terror blasts through the bond. All I get are glimpses of you and him—and then nothing. Back to silence. I'd like to know what caused such a disruption."

She served herself from the platters of food.

"It was an argument, and the rest is none of your concern."

Those words—none of your concern—only added salt to the ever-growing wound in my heart.

"Is it why you look like your grief and guilt and rage are eating you alive, bit by bit?"

"Get out of my head," she said, barely raising her voice.

"Make me. Push me out. You dropped your shield this morning—anyone could have walked right in."

She started to hold his stare, and I held my breath—hoping.

Until she glanced down again in apathy and asked "Where's Mor?"

My entire body tenses. All of my instincts wanted me to provoke her, to push her until she said what I wanted and acted how i wanted.

"Away. She has duties to attend to." I told her instead. "Is the wedding on hold, then?"

She paused eating barely long enough to mumble, "Yes."

"I expected an answer more along the lines of, 'Don't ask stupid questions you already know the answer to,' or my timeless favorite, 'Go to hell.' "

I had to ask, "Did you give my offer any thought?"

After a long while she said, "I'm not going to work with you".

A dark calm settled over me. "And why, Feyre, are you refusing me?"

She pushed around the fruit on her plate. "I'm not going to be a part of this war you think is coming. You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn—they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who's wielding it."

"I want your help, not to manipulate you," I snapped. It seemed that being compared, even subtly, to that simpering High Lord was becoming a sore spot for me.

My flare of temper made her at last lift her head. "You want my help because it'll piss off Tamlin."

Of course she'd think that. Of course.

"Fine," I breathed. "I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help."

Ask me why; push me about it Feyre, I said with my eyes.

When I could see that she would not, I continued quietly. "I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years. I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please—help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.".

I had laid it all bare, but she simply went back to eating.

Unable to look at her any longer I winnowed away.

She didn't join me for dinner.

She slept well past breakfast

But I made sure to be there when I emerged at noon. She wouldn't get rid of me that easily. I nudged her toward the table i'd arranged with books and paper and ink.

"Copy these sentences," I said, handing her a piece of paper.

She looked at them for a moment before reading them perfectly:

"Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of." She set down the paper, wrote out the three sentences, and handed it to me.

She'd been practicing her reading, but how about her shield?

My claws slammed into her mind a moment later.

And bounced harmlessly off a black, glimmering shield of adamant.

I blinked. "You practiced."

She rose from the table and walked away. "I had nothing better to do."

I remembered the rare days locked away Under the Mountain when Amarantha had no one for me to torture and no time to force me to pleasure her. The only thing that kept me sane as I waited there in my room for her to eventually make her way to it when she did find the time, was reading. Books had taken me out of that hell hole for just a little while, and every page helped. I figured maybe Feyre could use that escape right now too.

I sent a collection of my favorite books down to her room with a note telling her how to reach me if she wanted to.

Days passed—and she didn't.

I returned at the end of a particularly shitty week. I had to make a visit to the Hewn City and barely got to go home to Velaris at all. When I did it was to discuss Hybern and the Wall, which put everyone in a bad mood.

When I returned, I saw that Feyre had taken to situating herself in one of the little lounges overlooking the mountains. I glanced at the book in her hand—an all-time favorite of mine- and started when I saw she had almost finished it in one week.

Impressed,but still worried, I slid between two of the oversized armchairs, with twin plates of food in my hands, and set them on the low-lying table before her. "Since you seem hell-bent on a sedentary lifestyle," I said, "I thought I'd go one step further and bring your food to you."

"Thank you," she told me flatly.

A short laugh to hide how much her dead tone devastated me.

"Thank you? Not 'High lord and servant?' Or: 'Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.'?" I clicked my tongue. "How disappointing."

She set down the book and extended a hand for the plate, apathy still plainly on her face.

No. I can't take that look anymore.

I pulled the plate towards me with magic before she could grab it.

No.

She reached again. Once more, a tendril of my power yanked the plate further back.

"Tell me what to do," I pleaded. "Tell me what to do to help you."

Keeping that plate out of reach, I spoke again, feeling the talons of smoke curl over my fingers and great wings of shadow spread from my back.

"Months and months, and you're still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?".

"He's giving me space to sort it out," she said, with at least some of that familiar bite in her words Thank the Cauldron.

"Let me help you," I said. "We went through enough Under the Mountain—"

She flinched.

"She wins," I breathed. "That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart."

I had been chanting those words to myself incessantly every time I woke from a nightmare sweating and screaming. But they applied just as well to her.

At my words she merely lifted the book and two words shot into my mind through the bond Conversation over.

"Like hell it is," I snarled. I shut the book with half a thought.

Bastard. Arrogant, presuming bastard, she thought hotly.

Slowly, she lifted my eyes to me. And I saw … not hot temper—but icy, glittering rage.

Frost started to slowly coating the book in her hands before she hurled it at my head.

I shielded fast enough that it bounced away and slid across the marble floor behind us.

GOOD. good. Finally.

"Good," I told her aloud, my breathing a bit uneven. "What else do you have, Feyre?"

The ice melted to flame, and her fingers curled into fists.

Relief flooded through me at the sight. A feeling, for once. Not like that hollow cold and silence.

She had not put her shield back up so I heard the moment her thoughts turned south.

The thought of returning to that manor with the sentries and the patrols and the secrets … I sank back into my chair. Frozen once more.

"Any time you need someone to play with," I said, pushing the plate toward her on a star-flecked wind, "whether it's during our marvelous week together or otherwise, you let me know."

She didn't look up at me again as she devoured the food.