Chapter Text
Amarantha had been smiling when she gave the order, which was somehow worse than if she'd shouted it. She never shouted. She let her voice go soft and pleasant right before the cruelest things, like a woman settling in to watch something she already knew the shape of.
Fetch the Spring Court's little emissary for me, would you, Rhysand. I do so want to see him.
She hadn't said anything else. She hadn't needed to. Rhys had felt the room's attention shift toward him, and he'd known, with the particular cold certainty he reserved for Amarantha's specific brand of theater, that this wasn't a summons. It was a test she already knew the answer to.
Tamlin was in the throne room, prowling it like a caged animal that had forgotten the cage had walls on more than one side. The High Lord of Spring didn't so much as glance at him — just kept moving, jaw locked, every line of him wound so tight Rhys half expected him to shift without meaning to, right there in the hall, claws splitting through his own composure. Rhys didn't need to ask what was wrong. He could smell it from ten feet off: fury, and under the fury, something closer to panic, an alpha's instinct screaming that something belonging to him was unguarded and he could not get to it.
Convenient, Rhys thought, and hated himself a little for how satisfying the thought was.
He didn't slow down to needle him. There wasn't time, and some old, buried decency in him — smaller these days than it used to be, but not entirely gone — didn't want to spend it on cruelty when there were better uses for the next ten minutes.
He knew the Spring Court's rooms well enough by now, five months of forced familiarity teaching him the layout better than he'd ever wanted to learn it. He didn't check the obvious places first — Lucien's own room, the library he sometimes retreated to. He went straight to Tamlin's door, because if he were an omega running out of time and options in a mountain full of alphas who'd sell him for sport, he'd go to ground somewhere that smelled like safety, even borrowed safety. Even safety that had already failed to be there when it mattered.
The corridor outside was silent in the specific way that meant someone was making themselves very small on the other side of it.
Rhys opened the door to Tamlin's room, moving carefully, one hand already braced flat against the wood in case it needed to be shut again fast.
Tamlin's antechamber smelled like growing things gone slightly too rich — moss and crushed green stems, the particular loamy sweetness of Spring Court magic seeping even into stone that had never seen real sunlight — layered under something sharper, more animal. Alpha scent, thick and deliberate, saturating every surface like it had been laid down recently, and with intent. Rhys grimaced despite himself, some old instinct in him bristling at walking into a room so thoroughly marked by someone else.
He was right. He could smell that too, underneath it — sweeter, warmer, a scent that didn't belong to Tamlin at all.
Lucien was in the room, tucked into a makeshift nest scattered across the floor near the far wall — blankets dragged from the bed, a cloak that looked like it might have been Tamlin's, pillows piled without much order into something that looked less like comfort and more like a barricade. The omega looked up as Rhys leaned against the doorway, and even from several feet away, Rhys could see it plainly: the glassy sheen over his eyes, the flush high on his cheekbones, the faint tremor running through him that had nothing to do with cold.
Lucien's mismatched eyes were glazed, unfocused at the edges, and the scent coming off him was thick, cloying, slightly sweeter than Rhys imagined it usually was — more cinnamon now than fallen leaves, something warm and rich that filled the whole room and made it difficult to think clearly standing this close to it.
Fuck.
Rhys did the mental math without meaning to — how long Spring had been trapped Under the Mountain, how the seasons here meant nothing anymore, no true sun, no true changing of anything, and yet bodies kept their own time regardless. Omegas ran their cycles roughly every three months court or no court, mountain or no mountain. He'd bet good money Amarantha had known exactly what state Lucien would be in the moment she demanded Tamlin's emissary be fetched. The timing was too neat. Tamlin's snarling had been answer enough on its own.
Lucien's hazy eyes widened at the sight of him in the doorway, then narrowed to slits almost immediately after, some old instinct for danger cutting through the fog fast enough to matter. He pressed himself back against the wall, further into the nest, dragging Tamlin's cloak instinctively across his own chest like it might do something to hide him. A high whine caught in his throat before he strangled it.
He's afraid of me. Rhys registered it fast, adjusted just as fast — stayed exactly where he was, didn't take a single step closer, made his own posture as unthreatening as he knew how. He was an unfamiliar alpha in a room with an unmated, unprotected omega mid-heat; of course the fear came first. It would have been strange if it hadn't.
Lucien didn't stay cowed for long, though. Whatever fear had flickered through him hardened fast into something else — teeth bared, canines glinting, a low, continuous snarl building in his throat even as his shaking hands fisted uselessly in the blankets beneath him, betraying exactly how little strength he actually had to back the threat up.
Every instinct in him was probably pulling two directions at once and he looked, for a moment, like he might tear himself apart between them — the urge to bare his throat and make himself smaller warring visibly with the urge to make himself as loud and dangerous as possible so the alpha in the doorway would think twice.
"Don't," Lucien said, guttural, "come any closer.”
Rhys snorted, despite himself, despite the room, despite everything currently working against him having any reason to find this even a little bit funny.
But underneath the snort, his mind was already turning, fast and grim, working hard against the low, insistent hum his own instincts had started up somewhere in the base of his skull, a hum that had opinions about the scent in the room, about the omega in obvious distress in front of him, about a dozen things that had absolutely nothing to do with what needed to happen next. What the fuck was he going to do. Every instinct he had, the decent ones, the ones he actually trusted, recoiled at the idea of dragging a mid-heat omega —one who could barely lift himself off the floor, let alone walk— into the middle of that throne room, in front of Amarantha and every alpha currently seated at her feet like dogs waiting to be fed.
He smirked anyway, because letting any of that show on his face right now would help exactly no one.
"Hello," he said.
Lucien tried to get up. Failed almost immediately, legs giving out under him with a small, furious noise of frustration, panting hard from the effort alone. "Fuck off." The words came out sharp — impressively sharp, given the state of him, given how visibly it cost him to get them out at all.
Rhys let the door swing shut behind him, blocking off whatever residual scent might carry down the hall — not that it would matter much, not with Tamlin's own scent already saturating every surface of the room like he'd marked it deliberately, recently, and with real intent behind it.
"Little fox," he said, softer this time, no longer amused so much as cataloguing — the shake in Lucien's limbs, the sheen of sweat along his collarbone, the nest he'd clearly built out of whatever he could drag together in a room that wasn't his. Not comfortable. Just defensible. A cornered animal's version of shelter.
"I said fuck off." Lucien's voice cracked around the words, some of the earlier snarl already draining out of it, replaced by something more like exhaustion fighting to stay upright against a wall it was steadily losing to. "Don't need — I don't need anyone. Get out." The words were slurred slightly, and underneath them Rhys could hear the war still going — some part of Lucien meaning every word, and some other part of him, lower and less rational, tracking Rhys's every small movement with an attention that had nothing to do with wariness anymore, or not only that.
He's further along than I thought. Rhys kept his expression easy, unbothered, while his mind ran fast and cold underneath it, working hard to stay above the low, insistent pull of his own instincts, which had started cataloguing things he had no business cataloguing — how Lucien's scent had shifted again, sweeter, closer, the small, helpless way his breath caught. Not now. Not ever, with him, but especially not now. He shoved it down again, harder this time, and thought instead about water, about how long Lucien had been alone in here, about whether Tamlin's absence was hours or longer, whether longer meant something worse than simply bad timing.
"I'd love to." He kept his voice level, deliberately easy — a wall built specifically to keep everything on the other side of it exactly where it belonged. "Believe me. But Amarantha sent me to fetch her guest of honor's emissary, and I imagine she'll be considerably less pleasant to both of us if I come back empty-handed."
"Then tell her to fuck herself." A shudder ran through him again, worse this time, his whole body curling briefly around it, and Rhys watched the fear in Lucien's eyes flicker, for one unguarded second, into something closer to need before the wariness slammed back down over it, fast and furious, like Lucien had caught himself at something shameful. His eyes stayed locked on Rhys regardless, tracking every inch of him like he expected the calm to be a trick
Rhys snorted. "It'll be fuck you if you keep that up."
Lucien stiffened, but he said, "Oh, I don't know. She seems to prefer you."
Rhys took a slow breath, let it out through his nose. "Lucien."
"Tell her—" Lucien's brow furrowed, the sentence getting away from him somewhere in the middle, thought fraying before he could finish it. "Tell her I'm dead."
"She'd want proof."
"Tell her I'm dying, then." His voice cracked lower, rougher. "Feels like I'm dying anyway."
Rhys thanked the Cauldron, yet again, for his own designation. From the look of Lucien, whatever this actually felt like from the inside, it looked like it really, truly sucked.
He'd seen enough court omegas paraded through that throne room to know exactly what Amarantha intended to do with Lucien if Rhys walked back in with him, and none of it involved dignity, or privacy, or anything resembling mercy.
The thought of it — of Lucien dragged in front of that whole leering audience, shaking and half-lucid, unable to so much as stand under his own power — put something cold and ugly in Rhys's chest that had nothing to do with instinct and everything to do with the thin, stubborn decency he still hadn't managed to kill off after fifty years of trying. That, at least, he didn't have to fight down. That one he let sit.
He crouched instead, keeping distance, keeping his hands visible, keeping every part of his own scent as carefully neutral as he could manage — a difficult thing, with his body still humming low and insistent under the surface, still tracking the shift and shudder of Lucien's breathing with more attention than was strictly useful. He kept his voice level over the top of it, the way he'd learned to keep everything level Under the Mountain. "How long have you got left. Of this."
"Don't know." Lucien's jaw was tight, fighting to keep the words steady. A shudder went through him, and his hand fisted hard in the blanket beneath him, some fresh wave of it visibly dragging his focus sideways before he wrenched it back. "Tam left."
The way he said it was small, and a little lost, and something sharp and ugly reared its head in Rhys's chest before he could stop it — not quite anger on Lucien's behalf, though it wore that shape closely enough to pass. He recognized it after a beat for what it actually was: some old, proprietary instinct, alpha and unhelpful, bristling at another male's failure to guard what was apparently his, and wanting, with an intensity that startled him, to be something better than that failure by comparison. He hated it.
"Convenient timing for him."
"He didn't know it'd be today." Something flickered behind Lucien's eyes, too tired to be fully defensive. "Doesn't matter. Not his fault."
Rhys doubted that very much, but said nothing, filing it away instead with everything else he'd catalogued about Spring's High Lord over the past several miserable months — a growing list, none of it flattering.
"Here's what's going to happen," he said instead, low, careful, watching Lucien's face for any sign the words were actually landing through the fog. "I'm going to stay here a while. I won't come close until you tell me I can. But I need your scent on me, and more than if j just sit here. When I go back to the throne room looking satisfied and ruffled, I'll tell her you're not in a state to be seen. Let her draw her own conclusions about why. It might satisfy her enough to buy you the night."
Lucien snarled again, weaker than before but no less immediate. "Tam—"
"Tamlin is stuck down here too. And I don't particularly care what he thinks about any of this."
He'd be absolutely livid, Rhys thought, and found he couldn't summon much guilt over that fact at all.
Lucien watched him, something calculating surfacing behind the glassy exhaustion, some old, sharp instinct for reading motive even now, even like this. "That's why. You want to piss him off."
No. "Perhaps," Rhys said instead, even. "But you're not currently in a position to bargain over my reasons. You're in a position to decide whether you'd rather let me help, or take your chances explaining your condition to Amarantha yourself.”
A long pause. Lucien's eyes searched his face for something — a tell, a trick, some proof the offer wasn't what it looked like — and found, apparently, nothing he could use, because the fight finally seemed to go out of him all at once, exhaustion winning the argument his instincts had been losing anyway.
"Fine."
Rhys nodded. "I need to sit in the nest."
Lucien's head snapped up as much as it could, some jagged spike of alarm cutting through the haze fast enough to matter. "No."
"Lucien—"
"No." The word cracked down the middle, more desperate than furious now, some instinct baring itself he clearly hated. "That's — that's mine. It's not — you don't get to just—"
"I'm not going to touch you." Rhys kept his voice even, low, deliberately boring, the opposite of a threat. "I'll sit at the edge. I won't come near you. But it has to be believable, and this—" he gestured, faint, at the distance between the chair and the nest, "—isn't."
Lucien didn't answer right away. His breathing had gone uneven, chest working too hard for someone doing nothing but sitting still. A fresh wave seemed to move through him — his eyes unfocused entirely for a moment, fixed on nothing, mouth parting around a sound he bit back before it fully formed. His hips shifted, restless, some old animal part of him responding to a room saturated in the wrong alpha's scent and getting nothing it wanted from it. He made a small, furious noise at his own body for that, like he could will it into behaving through sheer resentment.
Rhys watched the whole of it happen and felt his own instincts stir in answer, low and unbidden — some old, unhelpful thread of him registering distress, registering want, registering an omega's body doing exactly what an omega's body was built to do, and wanting, for one ugly half-second, to close the distance instead of holding it. He crushed it flat before it could become anything more than a thought, the way he'd learned to crush most things Under the Mountain, and let none of it touch his face.
When Lucien finally spoke, his voice had lost most of its edge, worn down to something smaller. "Don't touch me."
"I won't."
"Say it again." His eyes had drifted to Rhys's hands, tracking them with a wariness that had gone glassy at the edges, less sharp calculation now and more animal instinct running on fumes.
"I won't touch you, Lucien." Steady. Flat. The kind of flat that was doing a lot of work to stay that way. "I'll stay near the edge."
Lucien's breathing had gone ragged, some new war playing out behind his glazed eyes — the animal terror of a boundary being asked of him during the one stretch of time his body had no interest in negotiating anything, warring against the cold, exhausted logic that knew Rhys was right. His hands twisted harder into the blankets.
"Edge," he finally said. "The edge only. You put one hand past that — " He didn't finish the threat. Didn't need to. The fury in his voice did the work his body currently couldn't.
"The edge only," Rhys agreed.
He crossed the room slowly, telegraphing every step, giving Lucien time to see him coming, time to snarl again if he needed to. He lowered himself down at the very outer edge of the nest — not touching, a full foot of space kept deliberately between them — and went still.
Lucien flinched at the proximity anyway, a full-body flinch, and then hated himself for it audibly, a frustrated, wrecked sound catching in his throat. "Don't," he managed. "Don't look at me like—"
"I'm not looking at you like anything." Rhys kept his eyes forward, off him entirely, fixed on the door instead. Giving him that much, at least. "I'm counting ceiling cracks. Riveting work."
A broken, humorless huff of breath escaped Lucien despite everything. "Hate you."
"Noted."
Lucien's eyes slid shut again, his body finally starting to lose the argument with itself in earnest — the fight draining out in increments too small to track individually, the nest and the wall behind him doing more to hold him upright than his own spine was managing. "Still here," he mumbled, some far-off part of him circling back to the fact like he'd nearly lost it.
"Still here," Rhys confirmed.
A silence. Rhys said, “Is this particularly bad?” Or is it because you are alone, and afraid. He did not say that bit.
Lucien shot him a withering look. “You don't get it.”
"No," Rhys agreed, quiet. "I don't."
He didn't reach for him. Didn't shift any closer than he'd already allowed himself, even as every line of Lucien's body seemed to be fighting some current pulling him the opposite direction — toward the nearest scent, the nearest wamth, whether he wanted it to or not, whether it was the right one or not. Lucien seemed to hate himself for it in real time, hands twisting harder into the blankets, teeth gritted, fighting his own instincts with a kind of grim, humiliated stubbornness that Rhys found, despite everything, almost impressive.
"It'll pass," Rhys said, low. Not gentle, exactly. Just steady. A fact stated plainly rather than a comfort offered. "The wanting. It's not really about me."
"I know that." Lucien's voice cracked around the words, sharper for a second, some flare of his usual venom breaking through. "Doesn't make it—" He didn't finish. Another wave, worse than the last, took whatever was left of the sentence with it. His eyes had gone glassy again, unseeing, fixed somewhere just past Rhys's shoulder.
Rhys let his own scent settle slowly into the blankets beneath him — enough to be believed, and not one thread more than that. He kept his breathing even, his posture unthreatening, every part of himself deliberately, carefully boring, a wall instead of a door.
Lucien's eyes slid shut sometime after that, his breathing gradually less ragged, though whether it was surrender or simple exhaustion winning out, Rhys couldn't tell, and didn't ask.
He stayed exactly where he'd said he would. Didn't move. Didn't speak again until the silence had stretched long enough that he was fairly sure Lucien had lost the thread of consciousness entirely, dropped under whatever wave had finally outlasted him.
Lucien had gone mostly still, aside from the occasional tremor that ran through him and the small, restless shifting of someone whose body hadn't quite agreed to the terms his mind had settled on.
He studied him a while, since there was nothing else to do and no one to perform composure for. The sharp jaw, freckles scattered like something spilled and never quite cleaned up, the fox-quick eyes gone soft and unguarded now that there was no one awake behind them to keep the walls up. It was strange, seeing him like this — Rhys had only ever crossed paths with him across council tables and battle plans, sharp-tongued, deliberately difficult, playing whatever careful game kept him breathing. He hadn't expected this version to exist underneath it. He wasn't sure why it surprised him. Everyone had a version like this, buried somewhere.
He kept working the plan over anyway, because it was easier than sitting with the rest of it. He'd need to muss his own clothes convincingly — nothing dramatic, nothing that would read as staged, just enough. He'd need Lucien's scent worked properly into the fabric, not just brushed past it. He'd need to time his return for late enough that exhaustion would read as plausible on his own face, not have to fake it. Small, ugly, practical details, and he catalogued each one with the same flat, professional focus he brought to actual missions, because letting himself feel anything else about it right now wouldn't help either of them.
Rhys took one of Tamlin's shirts from the nest on the way out — one of the ones most soaked in Lucien's scent, buried near the bottom where he'd clearly wanted it hidden rather than displayed.
Lucien half stirred at the disturbance, bared his teeth vaguely in Rhys's direction, some deep animal part of him registering the theft even through the haze. He didn't fully wake. Rhys grimaced, guilt sitting cold and unwelcome in his chest — removing a part of his nest, however small, however necessary, felt like one indignity too many to be adding to the pile tonight.
Some low, persistent thread of his own instincts didn't love it either, bristling at the idea of taking anything from an omega mid-heat without permission, useful reasons or not.
He did it anyway, careful, quick, and eased the door to the bedroom shut behind him before he let himself think too hard about it.
In the antechamber, alone, he tore the shirt down the side and pressed it to his throat, working it in deliberately — not a brush, not a hint, but scenting it the way anything believable would need to be scented. Evidence. He made himself think of it in exactly those clinical terms, because the alternative — dwelling on what it actually meant, what he was actually about to let an entire throne room believe about a male currently curled half-conscious and utterly unable to consent to any part of this story — wasn't a thought he had room for right now.
The scent settling into his own skin did something low and unwelcome regardless, some instinct registering it as his now, however falsely, however temporarily, and he shoved that down with the rest.
He mussed his own hair next, undid the top clasp of his jacket, rolled one sleeve slightly, all the small, unglamorous details of a story that needed to hold up to a glance without holding up to any real scrutiny. He didn't dwell on how easily the performance came to him. That, too, was a thought for later, if later ever arrived.
Rhys took his time on the walk back — unhurried, faintly bored, the exact pace of a man returning from something pleasant rather than something urgent. He'd learned long ago that speed read as guilt Under the Mountain. Amarantha noticed everything that looked like haste, filed it away, used it later when it suited her to use it. He'd watched her do it to others. He didn't intend to hand her the same weapon.
The throne room hit him the way it always did — too bright, too loud, the particular stink of fear and sycophancy layered under too much perfume, and under all of that, unmistakable even from the doorway, the heavy, saturating weight of Amarantha's own scent, an alpha's dominance laid over the entire room like a hand pressed flat against the back of every neck in it. It was the kind of scent built to be felt rather than simply noticed. Rhys had learned to let his own instincts do exactly that much and no more; enough submission to be unremarkable, never enough to be interesting to her.
Amarantha was draped across her throne when he entered, one leg hooked over the armrest, examining her nails with the specific boredom of someone who enjoyed being watched pretending not to care that she was.
"You took your time," she said, without looking up.
"You did ask for Spring's emissary." Rhys let a slow, satisfied smile curl at the edge of his mouth — the kind he knew she'd read exactly one way. "Turns out he was otherwise occupied. I saw no reason to interrupt on your behalf."
That got her attention. Her eyes came up, sharp and assessing, dragging over him with the kind of scrutiny that used to make his skin crawl and now just made him hold very still and let her look. "Occupied."
"Mm." He let the pause stretch, unbothered, and reached into his jacket for the shirt, laying it deliberately over one arm rather than handing it over, like he wasn't in any hurry to give up proof of a good evening. The scent clinging to it was unmistakable now, layered thick. "He sends his regrets. Says he's indisposed."
A ripple of laughter went through the room — the particular ugly delight of courtiers who'd learned exactly what currency pleased their queen. Tamlin, near the base of the dais, went rigid, teeth baring. Rhys didn't look at him. Didn't need to. He could feel the fury radiating off him from ten feet away, tightly leashed, murderous.
Amarantha's mouth curved. Her gaze flicked to Tamlin, cataloguing his reaction with obvious relish, before returning to Rhys. "I didn't realize your tastes ran that way, Rhysand…"
"Neither did I, until recently." Rhys inclined his head, easy, unbothered. "Consider it an unexpected perk of extended captivity."
"And here I thought you found my court's little pets beneath you."
He let the smile widen fractionally. "Would you like details, or would you rather imagine them yourself? I find you're usually more creative than reality allows for."
That earned a real laugh from her, sharp and delighted, the kind that meant he'd read the room correctly.
Tamlin's eyes were on him now, burning, and Rhys let himself meet them for exactly one second — long enough to make sure the fury landed, long enough to make sure Tamlin understood precisely nothing about what had actually happened in that room — before looking away, bored, like the High Lord of Spring wasn't worth a second glance.
Amarantha's gaze slid to him, unhurried, delighted anew at finding something else to play with. "Oh, don't sulk, Tamlin. Rhysand's simply enjoying himself. Surely you don't begrudge him a taste." Her smile sharpened further. "Or is that exactly what you begrudge?"
Rhys’s stomach turned over, disgusted, but he kept his face amused.
Tamlin said nothing. His silence was its own kind of confession, and the room seemed to feel it too, that particular hush that came over a crowd sensing blood in the water and choosing, wisely, not to be the one who drew first.
"Nothing to say?" Amarantha rose from her throne in one fluid motion, drifted toward him with the unhurried cruelty of a predator that had already won and simply enjoyed the walk. "How disappointing. I do love it when my guests entertain me." Her fingers found his chin, tilted his face up, forced the eye contact he was so clearly trying not to give her. "Perhaps I should send for your little fox myself. See how distracted he truly is."
The threat landed exactly as she meant it to — Tamlin's whole body going rigid, some helpless, furious calculation flickering behind his eyes that had nowhere useful to go.
Rhys kept his expression bored, indulgent, utterly unbothered, while underneath it something in him went very cold and very still. He let a lazy laugh slip out instead, pitched to cut through the tension before it could curdle into something Amarantha might actually act on. "You'd be wasting the trip. Trust me. He's in no state to entertain anyone tonight, least of all you." He raised his goblet slightly, toasting the air. "Give him till morning. I promise he'll be worth the wait."
Amarantha's attention swung back to him slowly, considering, the threat to Tamlin still hanging half-finished in the air like she hadn't decided yet whether to let it drop. For a long moment she only looked at Rhys, reading him the way she read everyone — for weakness, for the seam she could work her claws into.
Whatever she found, or didn't find, seemed to satisfy her enough. She let go of Tamlin's chin like she'd lost interest in the toy, drifted back toward her throne, trailing her fingers idly along Rhys's shoulder as she passed him, proprietary, marking him the same way Tamlin had marked that room.
"Morning, then." She settled back into her seat, draped herself across it once more, goblet already refilled by some unseen hand. "You'll bring him to me yourself. I want to see him on his knees, Rhysand, not hiding in some borrowed bed." Her eyes glittered, dark and amused and utterly without mercy. "And you'll make sure he's properly grateful for whatever attention you gave him tonight. I do enjoy a good performance."
"Of course." Rhys inclined his head, easy, agreeable, already calculating how much of the night that bought them and how little of it was actually safe.
Amarantha's gaze lingered on him a moment longer, and her voice dropped, quiet enough that it was only for him, threaded through with something almost fond and entirely more dangerous for it. "Careful, Rhysand. I do like it when my things play with each other. Just don't let me find out you've grown attached."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Rhys said, and smiled, and reached for his own goblet, and did not think about the sound of Lucien's breathing evening out into sleep, or the way he'd said hate you like it cost him something to admit even that much honesty — and did not let himself wonder, not here, not with her eyes still on him, what exactly it would cost him if she ever found out he'd been lying about which parts of tonight were real.