𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝑅𝑒𝓈𝒾𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒮𝒸𝒶𝓇𝓈 | ᴀᴢʀɪᴇʟ

Chapter 79

Chapter 79

Rhysand watched from the wall as Helion's personal healer examined Arwen. She was sitting on the side of the plush bed, distracting herself with looking around at the décor. Azriel, in the corner adjacent to him, was swathed by his shadows and rather out of place against the light that reached every other inch of the room.

'It was remarkable that you returned from the dead, Rhysand,' Helion said into his mind, continuing their unspoken conversation that had initiated the moment the healer began attending to his sister. 'Even more so remarkable that you were able to bring that demon back with you.'

'I'll take it that you mean Amren and not Arwen,' he crooned.

'Yes.' The humour twitched his lips. 'Which makes this scene in front of me still quite unbelievable. Over two hundred and fifty years and she returned looking exactly the way she did the say she died. You are certain that it was no last trick of the Cauldron?'

Rhysand rolled his jaw. 'Certain.' He held back the growl in those words. 'I would have sniffed out a trick the first moment I entered her mind. You said it yourself that it is her celestian power that allowed me to find and bring her back.'

'I don't mean to insult or deny her existence,' Helion replied evenly. 'Just searching the possibilities. From what I understand there is a plain between our realm and the realm of the dead. Arwen had far greater control over her spiritual form than any of us and it is possible that she chose to move through them. She still doesn't remember?'

'No.' Rhysand hadn't been able to see much in the snippet that he pulled from her mind that day Azriel had dragged her from the bath. There had been panic. Her surroundings were a blur which was understandable for being in a dream. Nothing was ever quite real in those. It was as though she was trapped in a world that moved around her.

Helion approached the bed, a light tone in his voice as he spoke to the healer and Arwen as though their conversation carried nothing more than the importance of what sandwiches they would have for lunch. 'Is her body still where it was buried?'

Rhysand blanched. 'What?'

'Her body, Rhysand. You, Feyre and Amren all returned to your bodies. Since it has been over two centuries, I'm curious whether the process rebuilt her body or not.'

'I haven't checked.' He didn't want to check. Rhysand hadn't been back to that site since the day he buried her. His breakfast curdled in his stomach. 'Are you asking me to find out?'

'Yes.'

Helion continued talking away as though he wasn't requesting a solemn task of a brother to unbury his sister's body. Although, he wouldn't be the one to do it. Rhysand swallowed the lump in his throat, glancing at Azriel who had not removed his eyes from the one spot on the bed since they arrived.

Stretching the perimeter of his mind, Rhysand searched. 'Cass.'

Cassian's bellowing voice echoed through his head. 'Missing me already, Rhysie?'

Rhysand smiled to himself. 'Not in the slightest. And neither is Arwen.' He shared the world through his eyes—the sight of Arwen laughing at another of Helion's teases.

Rhysand could almost hear Cassian's grumble. 'Are you seriously reaching out just to taunt me that the lack of my presence is going unnoticed?'

He wished. 'I have a job I need you to do. Sooner rather than later.'

'I swear to the gods Rhys, if I have to speak to Amren about—"

'I need you to dig up Arwen's grave.'