𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝑅𝑒𝓈𝒾𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒮𝒸𝒶𝓇𝓈 | ᴀᴢʀɪᴇʟ

Chapter 59

Chapter 59

Arwen stared at the painting before her. It was taller than she was and stretched the length of her arms. An extravagant, almost gaudy, golden frame hosted the picture of her mother. Her father's hung just to the left of it.

A low whistle had her head turning, eyes slowly removing from the strokes of paint. Cassian stood a few feet away at the junction of the corridor. "Breakfast," he told her.

Arwen looked back at the painting. Usually, art would ignite something within her. It was why the Rainbow had been one of her favourite places in the city, just below that bridge on the Sidra. But today, when she looked upon what used to be her favourite in the House of Wind, she felt nothing.

Rhysand had kept their mother's portrait up. Had kept her memory. A female of his close family who had died a brutal death. Murdered. Just as Arwen had died, yet the space where her portrait once hung (though smaller), still lay bare. 

"I'm not hungry."

She heard Cassian's sigh and the heavy steps he took to reach her side. "I don't particularly care, princess," he said. "You're coming to breakfast."

Arwen had awoken with company in her room that morning. Azriel had pulled her favourite chair away from the window to sit beside her bed. She had barked at him for moving the chair and once he stood, dragged it back into place. In her pathetic defence, it felt like she barely had a wink of sleep. And her wrists—they were tender.

This voice, right in the back of her head, above the nape of her neck, kept whispering to her. It was indistinguishable, but nonetheless, she understood what it tried to tell her.

"Do I look like one of your soldiers?" she muttered. "You don't order me."

In the corner of her eye, Cassian peaked a single brow. "I'll ignore that in consideration that you had a rough night. But you're still coming to breakfast. I've got to go back down to the camps today and I won't be back until tomorrow. I leave after this morning."

A stone dropped in her stomach.

Cassian smiled flatly. "Regret your words now?"

Stubborn, she said, "No."

He tipped his head towards the adjoining corridor, the smile growing softer. "Come on."

His hand clasped at her elbow. Arwen yanked her arm away from him, earning a shocked, but not irate, expression. She replaced the connection by gripping his wrist. Her choice. Her hold—her grip. What the voice in her head denied she had the ability of.

Arwen had two choices in her spirit realm.

It only took a year before she mastered control over her body to move through things, to let the tether pull her freely to and from the mountaintops and out of the borders of the Night Court. She could isolate it, stepping through doors so her foot landed solidly on the other side. Nothing, not even the stone of the mountain could stop her from moving through it if she desired.

Or she could remain solid. But she could not touch, nor feel, nor move anything. The corporal realm held power; it would move her if she remained in its way. On the streets of Velaris, she had been trampled once. Didn't feel the pain of their feet, but bodies rammed hers until she gathered the control to switch over to a form that let them walk through her.

So now Arwen wanted that control back.

Cassian said nothing about the change.

Only Mor was present for breakfast. The whereabouts of Feyre and Rhysand, whom she knew to have stayed in the House, were unknown to Cassian and Mor. Azriel had shadow travelled somewhere also unknown after their interaction.