When she opened her eyes, she was met with a blinding light.

Arwen’s eyelids fluttered, not expecting that much light in her prison cell. But when her eyes finally adjusted to the lights, she found herself being in a bedroom with large window overlooking a beautiful garden of roses with a myriad of colors.

The female slid her leg out from the fluffy, comfortable blanket and sat on the edge of her bed. Before her mind could comprehend what happened to her last, the door to her room cracked open.

Arwen jumped to her feet—and even with that sudden change of stance, her movement remained fluid and graceful. The High Lady of the Night Court herself entered, blue gray eyes watching her warily.

The Hybern’s Heiress was young and yet not so. Her pale complexion were flawless and smooth, a contrast to her unbound, inky dark hair that she undoubtedly inherited from the infamous King of Hybern. If there was ever a light in her azure eyes, it was now dim and hollow. Yet, she remained looking somewhat queenly. Thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one who has known many things that the years bring.

But one thing that Feyre caught in her eyes: Kindness.

Feyre knew by experience, that no amount of beauty, expensive dresses and jewelries could hide the rottenness of one’s heart that is mirrored by their eyes. The Hybern’s daughter, despite her lineage, was not evil. Nor wicked.

“Have you come to torture me again in your High Lord’s stead?”

Feyre was unfazed by the cold in Hybern’s Heiress’ lulling voice. She scanned her face. A bruise marred the left side of her beautiful face, cutting against her softly arched eyebrow. The beauty and grace of her true form that had been hidden under her glamour was now free for all to see.

Elain, Feyre’s sister, was just as beautiful and delightful as the flowers that she tended so patiently in her garden. Nesta, on the other hand, was even devastatingly more beautiful as a high fae.

But the Hybern’s Heiress was something else.

There was a certain grace she beheld that even Feyre never seen on any other high fae. It was unexplainable and she couldn’t put her finger on it. She wasn’t as fiercely beautiful like Nesta—but she was fair to look upon. Graceful.

She made Feyre felt like pulling a chair just so she can watch the Hybern’s Heiress all day.

A chuckle rumbled down the mating bond between her and Rhysand. Feyre sent a scowl down that bond.

Maybe you should ask her to model nude for your painting like you did to me, murmured Rhys. The thoughts he sent her rimmed with laughter.

Prick, thought Feyre.

Another teasing laugh.

“How are you, Arwen?” she asked her, choosing not to answer the Hybern’s Heiress’ earlier question.

Arwen tilted her head in surprise at hearing her name, and the way the High Lady asked of her wellbeing, as if meaning every word.

“How do you know my name?”

“We have a spymaster who have the dispositions to hear and feel things others can’t.”

“The Shadowsinger.”

Feyre nodded once.

The Shadowsinger, the one who saved her from the chief of the land in where her prison was. Why he did it, she didn’t know.

“His reputation precedes him,” murmured Arwen, “He’s quite a tracker. And now you have me. What are you waiting for?”

Feyre looked at Arwen and blinked. Her words were like an offer—a surrender. Her eyes steady. Accepting. There was no denial or fear in it.

“You’re hiding something. In the mind of yours.”

It took Arwen all of her strength not to recoil. Not to think of the child that she had grown to love as if he was her own flesh and blood.

“You can break me. You can kill me. But my mind is my own,” she claimed steadily despite the emerging hollow in her azure eyes.

“My people, my city is my own,” countered Feyre, although not in an offensive tone.

A frown appeared at Arwen’s expression. “Of course it is,” she commented with slight confusion drawn across the graceful plane of her face.

Feyre went silent again, deep in thought before deciding to cut to the chase.

“Do you have an army or not?” shot Feyre.

“What army?” blurted Arwen, looking positively baffled and confused at the same time. “I don’t know what you hear, but I have no army. Not even one soldier. Since my father passed, I have left everything behind.”

Truth. But still, Feyre needed to be sure.

“Then prove it. Let me into your mind.”

“No. I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it,” managed Arwen while trying her best to steel her mind shield, having just find out that Feyre Cursebreaker was also a daemati.

“If you will not talk, then,” Feyre tipped her head towards the door, “Come with me. See if the others would find it suffice to take your word for it.”

Without waiting for her response, Feyre started towards the door. Hesitating, Arwen made to follow her. It wasn’t like she had a choice.

As she trailed behind the High Lady of the Night Court, Arwen took in the environment around her. The estate was huge and lavish, surrounded aesthetically by splashes of arts here and there. More arts. For a place so big and luxurious, the place still managed to feel somewhat like home. Unlike the palace she grew up on.

She wondered who designed the estate.

When she entered that meeting space, all eyes turned on her. She went rigid when her eyes met Rhysand, and Arwen was determined to not break her gaze from those violet eyes, while at the same time focusing not to let her fear show. Or how her knees shook at the sight of that daemati and the things he’d do to push her mind shield open.

Rhysand pulled a side of his lips into a lazy grin, and Arwen felt blood rushed away from her face.

“Rhys.”

A low, warning tone made her actually jump, as Azriel suddenly materialized out of shadow. She dared a glance at him, finding no threat whatsoever in that unreadable hazel eyes of his.

The High Lord hummed in response to whatever silent communication shared between him and his spymaster. He folded a leg on his other one, sitting casually and turned his eyes back to her.

“Mind telling us who you’re protecting then?” purred Rhysand as he broke his gaze from Azriel. The latter moved away to stand near a blonde female, The Morrigan.

“No one,” lied Arwen.

“Is it the boy?”

That simple question, one originated from Morrigan was enough to sent Arwen’s mind into a fight and flight mode.

“No,” she lied again, though her chest and throat seemed to close up from the all consuming fear. “What happened to him?” she asked, mustering as much indifference as possible to that question.

Everyone in that room could practically smell the tangible fear radiating off of the Hybern’s Heiress.

“Nothing,” answered Cassian, the Illyrian general that she’d seen last with her son. “He is safe.”

“For now,” snorted a petite lady with a short hair that was as black as hers. Her silver eyes gleamed as she watched her with a predatory smile.

The fear and the panic, the desperation and hopelessness that she had tried to bury deep inside her threatened to overwhelm her at the idea of any of them putting their hands on her son.

“Amren,” hissed the High Lady.

“Hurting children is out of the question,” a warm, gentle masculine voice entered Arwen’s ears, lightly soothing her panic, “He is unharmed and will remain so. I promise you.”

Arwen looked into his eyes. “Then where is he now?” her voice came out trembling, and later on she realized, that a tremor had ran down her body too.

“Safe at your home,” was Azriel’s only reply.

“You just have to take our word for it,” added Rhysand, almost mockingly, no doubt copying the words that she had said to his mate earlier. He stood up from his chair and strutted to her. “But I am the High Lord of this court. You are the daughter of our late enemy. I can’t just let you leave out of here and ‘take your word for it’.”

Leave? Arwen wanted to laugh bitterly at that.

“You can do whatever you want with me, “ her voice steady, “But you are not getting in my mind.”

Not that monster, she thought. Not the monster who had tortured her for Mother knows how long.

Somewhere the corner of the room, Azriel stood like a sculpted statue made of shadow. His expression betrayed nothing, but inside, he felt like murdering his friend Rhys and tearing the estate apart for whatever mind game he had done against Arwen for the sake of getting into her head. For the way the bruise marring her gaunt, pale face, and for the fear and despair that simmered off of her.

But he couldn’t. Not when he was responsible for it too. And he hated himself for it.

“What about me?”

All eyes now turned to Feyre.

“I understand if you won’t let my mate into your mind. He could be a prick at times,” an almost scolding glance at her mate, then she turned to her, “But if you let me, with your permission, I can look into your mind just to make sure that you are not our enemy. Or a threat to Velaris. Then you can go.”

She didn’t know what ‘go’ meant. She found it hard to believe her, even when she found no games nor trick in her blue gray eyes.

“You won’t kill me?”

“It’s your father that was our enemy. Not you,” chirped Rhysand as he folded his arms and shrugged, “Unless of course we find out that you are the one gathering an army to attack our city.”

A shiver ran down Arwen’s spine. Letting the High Lady in her mind would leave her vulnerable, letting her know how much Thamrin meant for her. But if what Azriel said was true—if she could trust their word for it, they will leave her young son untouched.

Above all else, the heart is the risk most expensive of a price to pay. But if the city of Velaris could thrive, if the sound of children laughing every day at the city was any indication, then maybe the High Lord of The Night Court was not as cold blooded as she thought. Maybe not as hateful as her late father.

Anguished, she nodded at the High Lady of the Night Court. Feyre the Cursebreaker. Arwen knew that Feyre was once a mortal; she prayed to Mother that maybe, she still posses a mortal heart.

At once, Feyre was inside Arwen’s mind. A towering wall of her mind shield was pure white, it’s light almost offensive to her. But then a black crack appeared on that wall, allowing her to slip in.

What Feyre found was nothing short of shadow inside. There was blood at almost corner of her memories, one that she didn’t cause but had to witness. Arwen had been a prisoner in King Hybern’s kingdom for such a long time like a bird in a golden cage. Feyre saw through her eyes the faraway, indifferent look that King Hybern had when he looked at Arwen; a piece of memory when a beautiful lady resembling Arwen saved that golden hair as she smiled at her, eyes shone with much affection and sorrow; a toddler lying in his own pool of blood in the middle of the forest. Feyre was almost jolted with the force of how much Arwen had loved the Illyrian boy with the broken wings. What drove Arwen to chose to live in Velaris, why she even still bother to make a living—all for that boy she found dying in that forest.

Arwen was most happy living under that leaking roof of that tiny house of hers with Thamrin. Feyre was forced to remember her own past. Before she met Rhys, Feyre’s dream was nothing but to live in that slum house caring for her father while having enough time to paint.

What Arwen felt when living in that house with Thamrin felt exactly the same. That small heaven, but filled with so much happiness and content.

No one with that kind of love would even bother to think of gathering an army against them.

Feyre had seen enough.

She pulled herself away from her mind and her vision returned to the reality before her. The High Lady gave a small nod to Cassian, Mor, Amren and Azriel while at the same time letting Rhysand see what she saw in Arwen’s mind through their bond.

The indifference mask that Rhysand had on him fell off, and a look of sincere remorse graced his face.

“So we have been truly fed a misleading intel. You’re not the one planning to attack,” mused the High Lord rather wistfully. He looked at Arwen, his expression remorseful. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. For what my court did to you.”

Arwen thought she was dreaming. Maybe she was still indeed being in that lightless prison cell, and that all of this beautiful estate had been a dream.

Rhysand clenched his teeth together as he heard everything that Arwen had thought. While she was too astounded by his sincere apology, she had forgotten to put her mind shield back in place. He walked to open a glass door that led towards the exit, towards the thriving city of Velaris.

“You are free. And whenever you choose to still live here in Velaris, you and your son will still be under my protection.”

Arwen stared at the gray, stone pathway leading to her freedom laid before her eyes. Such salvation. Such mercy. Too easy.

A memory flooded her mind at the sight of those beautiful wildflowers and dandelion marking the edge of the path. She remembered they had that too in Hybern.

A general of her father had been caught trying to start a revolt behind his back. He was tortured and slaughtered while his wife and children was made to watch. The family was promised mercy. They were to be cast away, their eyes bound and they were told to open the covering of their eyes only when their feet felt the small waves of the water of the seashore. Arwen remembered the sound of the sea waves so loud yet so soothing at the same time. They believed they were walking on a beach somewhere far away, while they were actually walking towards their death to that cliff that was so far away down.

Such fall from grace.

Rhysand’s expression darkening at the image he saw in her head.

Arwen looked at Rhysand, then at the member of his court hesitantly. She swallowed her fear, but it didn’t stop her mind from screaming trap to her.

She began walking. Out of the door. Treading the path towards her freedom, rigged or not. Maybe towards her son waiting for her at their small, tiny home.

She found herself out of the estate, then into the city. Then she started walking faster.

She ran home.

***

[Author’s Note: So I realized I only read all the acotar series once. So I might mess up some of the details, so please be kind! Stay tuned for more updates, and if you liked the chapter don’t forget to vote and comment if you feel like it. Your opinions motivate me to keep writing! ❤️]