The inn could barely be called an inn. If I had had my way, I would have burned it to the ground right then and there. If we didn't need shelter—
Mother save me! There was only one bed. "I asked for two," I said, throwing my hands up in defense. My breath pooled out of me in a cloud of warm air. If we didn't share, we would likely freeze to death without magic.
Feyre didn't seem to bat an eye externally. Her shield was up so I couldn't entirely tell her inner thoughts, but I could guess hers were similar to mine. We weren't ready to share a bed. I wouldn't dare push her too soon, especially with the information I knew.
My mate.
Feyre, as beautiful as she was, was a terrible liar. "If you can't risk using magic, then we'll have to warm each other." Her cheeks pinked up, obviously thinking of other ways to warm.
In all honesty, I was too, a risky and risqué joke in the back of my throat.
"Body heat," She clarified, drawing the line. "My sisters and I used to share a bed— I'm used to it."
I wondered how long it had been. If it had been hard to adjust after so long. A chill ran through me. Body heat, any heat, I would take right then. "I'll try to keep my hands to myself." Even though it was like placing a juicy steak in front of a starving lion. Right next to my mate.
I shook the thought from my mind as she mentioned her hunger. Hunger bit at my stomach between the bouts of cold too. My smile dropped. She could not serve me food without knowing the seriousness of it all. I debated telling her at that very moment, but the cold was too much. "I'll go down and get us food," I said, "While you change."
No, I had set a precedent with my show at her almost wedding. Telling her about the mating bond would have to be a big show, a party with the inner circle. I would have to shout it from the roofs of Velaris. Nothing at all like this shabby excuse of an inn.
I pulled a cloak over myself and the way she looked at me, I couldn't help it. I nearly blurted it right then. Thankfully I had some sense and said something else instead. "I love it when you look at me like that."
Her whole face pinked up. "Like what?"
Like you love me I almost said. Instead, I said something else. "Like my power isn't something to run from. Like you see me."
Something like regret flashed over her features, flashes of our argument from before shouting down the bond. "I was afraid of you at first."
No, she had never been truly afraid of me. I told her as such. Then, before she could come up with something else to say, I went downstairs for food.
The inn catered to the lowest of the lows in my court, and it was evident as I worked my way through the raucous crowd toward the kitchen.
Thankfully, with the storm and the cold, most of the patrons were already drunk, slurring and cursing over a roaring hand of Poker. With the cape hunched over my shoulders, the nervousness of the one bed, and the weight of what Feyre was to me, was enough to make me look and feel almost normal. The grime and mud certainly helped too.
"What can I get for ya?" A small handwritten sign with the daily special practically soaked into the chalkboard read Rabbit Stew.
"Two a those," I said, throwing on an accent more inclined to the area. "A bottle a wine, and do ya got those meat pies?"
He nodded. "As long as ye don't ask what the meat is." His gaze on me was too critical.
I gave a short unconvincing nod. "Two a those too." Could he recognize me? "P-Please, sir."
The look of recognition faded from his face and he moved for the food. Within minutes, I was already headed back up the stairs, out of sight and out of mind of the rest of the raucous crowd downstairs, and definitely not noticed by those too busy in the rent by the hour rooms.
Her shields were down, as they tended to be when she was tired, or overthinking. From the racing thoughts through her mind of Tamlin, of me, of many things, I suspected it was both. Still, she was as observant as ever and thankfully opened the door before I could drop the precariously stacked trays.
I nearly dropped them anyway when I noticed what she had changed into. One of my sweaters, oversized on her, but she wore it so well I nearly cried at the beauty of it.
As if she had known exactly what it would do to me. Still, I managed to hold it together long enough to get the trays safely on the bed. The shivers that raked through me, I attributed to the rain.
"Go ahead," I said, with hopes that my voice wouldn't give me away. I would have to tell her eventually. "I'm changing first."
As I changed, she was practically screaming down the bond of nasty things. Trying not to think of me naked. I tried not to laugh out loud.
I would have to tell her about the mating bond. It would have to be tonight.
I nearly told her then as I was half naked and chilled, but the timing still wasn't right. I dressed the rest of the way, the warmth of the clothes, still cold as ever, was enough to help me relax. Feyre ate, she wasn't freaking out from the interaction with Lucien and the sentries earlier. That was growth. Still healing, still growing, my next words would have to be gentle.
She stared at me once I was dressed, most likely taking in the casual clothes that not even those closest in my circle tended to see.
She asked me a few questions about Illyrian fashion, which led to a discussion on magic. She hadn't realized how much magic I tended to use while keeping my city safe, getting dressed and even simply looking the part of High Lord. Of course, she once again had thoughts of her worthiness.
More trouble than I was worth.
"You're not." I hadn't meant to read her thoughts, but there were times when it was too easy.
In an instant, she took up the defensive. "Don't read my thoughts."
"I can't help what you sometimes shout down the bond," I said as smoothly as I could. Quite entertaining when she wanted to be. "And besides, everything is usually written on your face, if you know where to look." I debated if I wanted to tell her all the tells I could find, but decided against it. That would be a conversation for another time. I complimented her performance with Lucien as I finished my stew.
She moved onto the bed and leaned against the pillows, holding her glass of wine between her bone white frozen fingers. "Did you think I would go with him?"
That answer was more complicated. I paused my fork and chose my words as carefully as I would have with anyone not in my inner circle. I told her what I had witnessed and then I gave her a little bit of truth. "I found myself deciding that if you took his hand, I would find a way to live with it. It would be your choice."
It would always be her choice, especially after the horrors Tamlin had subjected her to.
The room became charged with a different kind of electricity then. "And if he had grabbed me?"
I turned my eyes toward her, my gaze unyielding. "Then I would have torn apart the world to get you back." Pure power of night in that moment, despite the ward on my magic I used no magic at all, just pure will power.
She shivered, but her gaze never faltered. "I would have fired at him, if he had tried to hurt you."
"I know."
I finished eating, moved the tray to the side and refilled her glass before I poured myself a hearty one.
She surprised me then. "One thought in exchange for another," Clever girl, using my own trick against me. "No training involved please."
I chuckled. If that was the game she wanted to play, I could play along. She had made it pretty clear over these past few months that there was an unspoken attraction between us on her end too. I would have to tell her about the bond. I would have to bring it up and hope for the best. But that wasn't what came out of my mouth.
"I'm thinking," I said choosing my words nice and slow, "that I look at you and feel like I'm dying. Like I can't breathe. I'm thinking that I want you so badly I can't concentrate half the time I'm around you, and this room is too small for me to properly bed you. Especially with the wings."
Not exactly how I wanted to explain the mating bond, but it was like there were no words for it.
Her reaction was visceral. For a fraction of a second fear flashed behind her eyes, then embarrassment. She finished her entire glass of wine in a few sips and took a deep breath.
"I'm thinking that I can't stop thinking about you." I liked that thought. "And it's been that way for a long while. Even before I left the Spring Court. And maybe that makes me a traitorous, lying piece of trash but—"
Oh no. "It doesn't."
She said no more, but her thoughts were a maelstrom of terrible thoughts about herself and Tamlin and how that relationship went down in flames.
"We should go to sleep."
I wanted to say so much more. Instead: "Alright".
She climbed under the duvet, her movement stilted. She shivered as she got into the bed and turned toward the wall. I got into bed too, the sheets nearly frozen. I turned out the lights and rolled toward her, but didn't quite touch her yet.
She shivered hard next to me, shaking the whole bed.
As uncomfortable as she seemed, I couldn't just let her suffer. I had a hundred excuses in my head to hold her close, all alphabetized and ready to pull at a moment's notice. I wouldn't do anything she didn't explicitly agree to, I wasn't her. We weren't under the mountain.
"You're shivering so hard the bed is shaking." Between the nerves and the fear of doing something completely wrong in front of my mate, I'm sure the words didn't come out smoothly at all.
"My hair is wet." Not entirely a lie, but I didn't have to access her mind to know there was more to it.
I didn't access her thoughts in that moment. After everything else that had happened in the last few moments, it just seemed wrong. Instead, I moved closer to her, to share my body heat. "No expectations, just body heat." I snaked my hands around her, entangled our legs and wrapped my wings around us, to keep in the warmth.
I was comfortable enough until she reached out a hand to my wing above her head. She traced it with a gentle freezing finger. I shuddered at the familiar electric feeling and pulled her closer without meaning to. The shivers through me having nothing to do with the cold.
"Your finger is very cold."
I shouldn't have said anything. Instead of one finger, she dragged two fingers down, using her nails. I tensed, tried not to react too much, but my body betrayed me.
"You cruel wicked thing," I growled, continuing the game she had started. She arched beneath my hands, like my words were doing uncontrollable things to her too. "Didn't anyone ever teach you manners?"
She played along. "I never knew Illyrians were such sensitive babies." She slid another finger down my wings.
My body reacted as expected. She kept stroking and I twitched along with it.
My hands began to touch her, feel her, but not in a way that was in anyway considered sexual, unless she wanted it to be. Lazy long circles around her navel, in the safe space between her navel and her breasts. She was not subtle in her body language in the least, inching closer to me and the evidence of my arousal.
"Greedy," I murmured, careful not to give in too much to my own desires, but only enough for her to examine hers. "First you terrorize me with your cold hands, now you want…" I paused, thinking of the right words, "What is it you want, Feyre?"
I ignored the thoughts in her head, the steady chant of more, more, more. I ignored them even though they echoed my own. It was obvious without having to hear the thoughts in her head she wanted more, the way her body reacted showed me she wanted more, so my hands teased her.
"What is it you want, Feyre?" I asked again, losing control of myself for a second too long and nipping at her earlobe.
She cried out and arched against me, despite her best attempts to fight against it.
"I want a distraction," she admitted breathlessly. "I want—" she paused attempting to find the right word. "—Fun."
I froze. The mere word threatening to send me back under the mountain, back into her bed.
This could be fun She had said. A distraction from the mundane
I had done it willingly. I had become her whore, her lackey, to keep everyone else safe and keep her distracted while I could.
But Feyre was not the same horrible woman under the mountain. Feyre was a fae with a human heart. Feyre was my mate, even though I could never tell her about that now that she only wanted fun, but I could provide a distraction or two.
"Then allow me the pleasure of distracting you," I slipped back into the cold confident persona.
If all she wanted was fun and distraction, I could do that. She didn't need to love me if it was all just a distraction.
She didn't need to love me if it was all just for fun. She didn't need to love me at all.
She would never know she was my mate either.
I would continue to quietly suffer for the sake of her fun.
Just like the last time I agreed to be someone's plaything.