A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 66: Honey Cakes

Chapter 66: Honey Cakes

"Do I look fierce?"

Rhys adjusted the strap around her bicep. "The fiercest warrior I know." The tight band holding the cobalt Siphon to her arm felt restrictive but she would have to get used to it. Or not, if she could get away with it. The rooftop was warm this morning, a tepid late-spring breeze curling around the mountaintops, omens of a warm summer coming.

"It's my birthday soon," she said, smiling at a flock of grey birds swooping overhead. "Have I told you that?"

Rhys chuckled. "I think you've mentioned it a few times."

She hummed pleasantly. It was still a few weeks away, in the last days of summer's first month. Cassian's was tomorrow and they planned to spend the day on a private pleasure barge, gambling and drinking and dancing. Well, the dancing was Mor's input. "I've never really gotten to celebrate it before. I've always worked the day through." Other than the few years in her childhood that she scarcely remembered.

Rhys put his hands to his lips, glancing over his shoulder to where Cassian and Azriel were warming up. "You're taking this better than I thought," he told her.

"He was going to kill me." She repeated that thought every time the memory threatened to overtake her. "I think it's easier too, knowing that he hurt somebody else. I can't be sorry for surviving, but the magic... It makes me feel like a thief. That maybe I killed him because I wanted his power."

Rhys tipped his head to her. "I have never met someone more avoidant of power than you. You thought I was practically a plague."

"Because you were an arrogant ass," she snipped. "Still are." Cassian waved her over. Rhys brushed against her back as he strode off towards Azriel, pinching her ass as he did. She yelped, but he was already out of range to hit back.

Cassian moved her straight into a warm-up, moving through the motions with her. He adjusted her stance once or twice with silent nudges of his boot or tilting her body, his hazel eyes dim but focused. He was acting more like Azriel than Azriel was, who was laughing with Rhys while they sparred.

He instructed her to sit so she did, crossed-legged. "I'm not really sure how to explain Illyrian magic since my go-to is that it will feel natural to call on." He sat across from her, one knee bent, the other folded underneath. "What do you feel?"

Galadriel stared at the stone to clear her thoughts. "It feels restless, but so does the fire magic. The only difference is that the Illyrian magic is cooler."

"Restless I can work with. It's alive, in its own way. It wants you to use it. Usually we start without Siphons to get a handle of it in its raw form, but I don't want you handling it like that, especially since we don't know how your body is going to react. We'll just go over drawing it out today and we can practice forming shields and weapons later." Despite herself, the prospect was a little exciting.

He walked her through a few breathing exercises of great familiarity, then calling on the magic to a simple flare between her hands. It took a good half an hour to get anything beyond a spark, but by the end of the hour she could hold a small and little unsteady—but still there—ball of something that resembled a faelight.

"How do you feel?"

Galadriel licked her lips. "Strained," she admitted. As he had told her, the magic seemed to want to arise from within her, but not in the way she wanted it to. Like trying to ride a stolen horse that would only accept its owner. "I've got a headache."

"That's enough for today then."

Galadriel was quick to follow him to her feet and grabbed his hand before he could fully turn away from her. He looked down at it, then at her. "What about the rest of training?" she asked. He was so off this morning. No witty remarks that had her stomach cramping with laughter, no bright grins where his sharp canines glinted against the morning sun, no earned snarls.