A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 97: Pale Face

Chapter 97: Pale Face

There was a faint glow on the dark ceiling. Galadriel could feel the straw and filth nestled into her hair, poking her skin through the shreds of cloth that remained of her dress. It was white and soft and she thought it might be the moon.

Tip tap tip tap tip tap.

She blinked. The light disappeared, the eclipse of her eyes erasing the moon from existence.

Tip tap tip tap tip tap.

The sounds overlapped, one echoing another.

Where had the moon gone?

It came back. No—

A round and white thing hovered above her again, but it was so much larger than the glow had been and not nearly as soft. It was wreathed with a waterfall of blood and two eyes like knots in ancient oaks. "Atticus says that you've become difficult to work with."

Ah. Not a moon or something close. Amarantha.

The queen circled Galadriel's body. She lay down in the centre of her cell on her back, waiting only for the call of her next meal.

"I told him to whip you if need be. Offered to bring someone else down more experience with the work of physical torture. But he says it's your mind. Scrambled like an egg. What use to me are you if I can't get into your mind?" She kicked with the toe of her pointed heal into Galadriel's side, earning a mere glare. "Some, I suppose. I have Rhysand wrapped around my finger because he knows that one wrong move and..." Amarantha crouched and from one ear to another, used the metal talon sitting on her finger to draw a sharp and precise line across Galadriel's neck. "Yet I can't help but think that you'll be even better to me dead. He'll have nothing but me."

Galadriel only tipped her head to the side, watching the Queen Under the Mountain leave. They had come an hour—a day—a week—later, banging and knocking. The guards, that was. Not Atticus. He came ahead of them, silent and sober. When he entered her cell, he knelt one knee near her shoulder and lifted her head with both hands. "Galadriel," he called. She didn't respond. She didn't really hear or see him. "Galadriel."

With a sigh, he motioned the guards that had come back away and sat on his haunches. He heaved her up, resting her back against the wall. With a glance to the now empty corridor, he murmured, "Today is it. It's over. One way or another—for you at least." He hadn't taken her into that room in weeks and they'd been laxer with remembering her meals than ever before. But she didn't question when he pulled out a rope and began to tie her hands together. He clasped them in a gesture of a prayer. "It's the least I could do—that's a fucking horrendous speech, I know. But it's all I have and all you're going to get. I thought it would be better for you this way. She wouldn't let you go until she was certain there was nothing I could do to get information from you. Until I'd shattered you so horribly that even if I did see something I wouldn't be able to tell if it was real or not."

He pursed his lips together and looked her over. He'd finished tying her but instead of dragging her to her feet, he sat and clasped his hands over tented knees. "Night. High Lord. Galadriel. They're the only things you say anymore, like a chant. Do you have prayers for the dead in the Night Court? I'll say one anyway. It'll be quick—nothing like what they did to that poor Beddor girl. Mortal. I never realised how fragile they are."

He put a scratchy sack over her head next and she didn't bother trying to peek out of it as he carried her out. Galadriel couldn't say how long the journey was. If she had grown tired and dropped out of consciousness from exhaustion or the stale air of the lower mountain had finally penetrated the last stiff layers of her awareness. Her body ached, even in Atticus's steady hands that held her with remarkable gentleness. He said nothing the entire time—that, she was sure of.

Her knees touched stone.

Her ears twitched with murmurs and the hushed cries of someone next to her.

Even in the darkness, she could see. Her skin knew the air of the throne room, the frazzled and trapped magic in the air. She also knew the sound of death, the catch of air in a tight throat from the faerie on her left.

The cloth was finally ripped from her head.

~

She had done it.

Her shoulders sagged. After all these years, she had outlived Amarantha's patience, her torture. Azriel would be proud of her. Galadriel imagined that it was his knife, Truth Teller, that the mortal girl in front of her held. That he had come to grant her mercy and release from a familiar hand.

As her eyes had adjusted to the sudden onslaught of light that made her head thump, on her left as she knew would lay there, a female faeire lay slumped and motionless. All Galadriel could do was exhale and wait.

The audience's eyes were latched on both her and the girl, tense and still and heavy. It was a rather grand-looking occasion, with the finest flags hanging from their poles poking from the cavernous walls.

The mortal girl trembled, her hand and knife bloodied. Galadriel wondered who would win if they compared the paleness of their faces. "Quickly," she instructed, her voice chipped and rough. "In and out. Don't stop to feel." Just as Azriel had taught her. She could almost feel his hands on her wrists, twisting the dagger in her hand as she struck an invisible foe.

This was the day she died.

The mortal girl's lips were parted, horror already ingrained in her features. By the state of her appearance, she had been here for some time. Her thin fingers clasped the hilt of the dagger, white bone poking through her skin. Blue eyes glanced to the throne, just to the side of it. Galadriel didn't bother looking. "I'm sorry." She lifted it. Braced it. Thrust it.

My apologies guys. For an explanation - recently moved and in an exhausting job. I haven't been writing at all, even for my other personal projects and I used to write every single day. I will try and write some more chapters than I currently have but I can promise a resolution to UTM in this and the next chapter.