A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 15: A Friendly Visit

Chapter 15: A Friendly Visit

Galadriel stood in front of the large, golden clawed tub. It was a marvellous bathroom, with transparent white drapes hung across a large window that overlooked another portion of the garden. Which she had checked thoroughly, not putting it past Rhysand to be lurking around down there.

The water was warm—steaming slightly, even. Nothing like the frozen lake. Nothing like the water so cold that it shut down her muscles one by one until she couldn't even feel her fist colliding with the underside of the ice as the current dragged her like she was its prey, ensnared within inescapable claws. Nothing like feeling coldness through the very marrow of your bones and—

"Here." Nuala brushed past her with little more than a whisper to sound her movements. She placed a warmed towel on the countertop closest to the bath.

Galadriel smiled, tightening the front of her robe. "Thank you." Nuala nodded and left the bathroom without another sound.

She had the house to herself for the day, other than the wraiths. Rhysand left her a note, reminding her that he and Morrigan left for a meeting with some of his governors. The spying part of her wanted to know every detail, the other part of her told her that it was a chance to be alone, and to embrace the quietness of the town house.

Galadriel shed from her robe and placed her toe into the water. Her eyelids snapped shut, a hiss smothered behind pursed lips as she continued to submerge herself further into the water. Her only saving grace was that it was hot enough that she couldn't imagine it as that frozen lake. Sighing, it enveloped her shoulders but no further.

~

Galadriel sauntered down the stairs of the town house, arms reached behind her as she finished tying off the back of her dress. The material cut down along her sides, kept together by a knot at her neck and one across the middle of her spine.

Two steps from the foot of the last stair, she could see a dark head perched on one of the seats in the sitting room that she could just see into to. "Azriel?" she called, wandering towards him. Azriel looked over his shoulder, smiling tightly and gestured for her to join him. "Rhysand isn't here, but I thought you of all people would have known that."

"I do," he said. "I came to see how you were."

"Me?" Galadriel moved to a respectable seat; one not too far, but with enough distance that even the bulky Cassian would fit comfortably between them. "I'm fine." Fine. It was such an easy answer, one neither here nor there. Because she was fine by all measures of the truth. Physically there was nothing wrong, mentally she was also technically 'fine'. "I, um, met the wraiths. Rhysand said that they were also yours."

Azriel glanced off to the hallway where one of them were no doubt lingering. "Yes. They have quite the natural gift for it. Wraiths can move through walls, did you know?"

"No." She smiled. "Not until last night that is. Rhysand actually came barging into my room because I screamed."

"Has that pissed him off yet?"

"What?"

Azriel tipped his head forward. "Calling him Rhysand."

Galadriel laughed, curling her feet onto the upholstery. "He hasn't said anything yet. But Rhys just sounds... too familiar for me. He's a High Lord, not my friend."

"Can't he be both?"

She didn't answer that one immediately. Instead she fiddled with a loose thread on the waist seam of her dress. "Is that what you wish of me, Azriel?" she asked, quietly as though part of her hoped he wouldn't hear to answer it. But even his rounded ears would pick up on anything more than an airy whisper. "Do you wish for me to be close to the High Lord?"