Chapter Text
Flickers at Night, Longing in the Letters
Song ⎯ The Letter, PJHarvey
⎯⎯⎯⎯Take the cup of your pen, wet the envelope, lick and lick it... can't you see in my handwritting, the curve of my G, the longing⎯⎯⎯⎯
***
Rhysand breathes in the damp air of his cell and counts the cracks in the ceiling. A few weeks have passed since that fragile truce between him and the Queen.
She has kept her word. No more pain, no more jagged edges of her lightning searing through him. Naturally, his appetite has returned—and with it, his calculating mind.
By day, he plays his part. The charming prisoner. The High Lord who does not flinch as Amarantha's court slithers around him, all venom and silk. He listens. He watches. The growing turmoil at the Summer Court borders is a whisper on the lips of nervous courtiers, a spark waiting to catch fire.
But by night—
He dreams of wind.
The brush of it against his face, the endless expanse of Velaris sprawling beneath him, the city a constellation of light against the dark.
His wings— hidden beneath his skin, stiff with disuse—ache between his shoulders. He hasn't let them free since he crossed the threshold of this damned mountain. Not after what Amarantha's soldiers did to them in the war. Not while he has no idea what she might do if he revealed them now.
His father's voice echoes in his skull, sharp as a blade: Weakness is a luxury you cannot afford.
The cell door groans shut, and the weight of the mountain presses down until he feels he might scream with it.
He needs more.
Not just the absence of pain, and certaintly not these fleeting moments where she looks at him and he forgets, for half a heartbeat, that they are enemies. He needs leverage. Access. A way to twist his fingers into the threads of her rule and pull.
Of course he has tried.
Flirtation like a blade balanced between his teeth—smirks at court, honeyed words tossed across banquet tables, the careless brush of his fingers against the arms of lesser courtiers just to see if she'll bite.
She doesn't.
At least, not where anyone can see. But he has memorized the way her breath hitches when he leans too close, the way her gaze lingers on his mouth when she thinks he won't notice. Small victories.
The notes he sends her are riskier.
Scrawled in the dead of night when even the guards' footsteps fade, passed by shadows loyal to no one but him. Sometimes she ignores them. Sometimes her replies come in sharp, elegant script, laced with a wit as deadly as his own. Once—once—she answered in kind, her words curling like smoke around the edges of the parchment, teasing.
And then nothing.
No invitations. No more whispers on parchment in the dark.
Perhaps she still regrets the storm that slipped beyond her control that night when they were tangled in pleasure. Perhaps she remembers, in the cold light of day, that he is still his father's son. Still the enemy.
Or she is simply too occupied with the onslaught of rebellion.
As the evening stretches on— he can't help himself. The weight of solitude presses down on him like a knife between the ribs. His gaze drops to the ink and parchment he keeps hidden under a scrap of cloth.
The pen scrapes against the surface as he writes, the sound too loud in the stillness. The words come easily—too easily perhaps.
"I am curious—is it just your scheming over court politics that keeps you occupied, or do you simply revel in taunting me with your absence?"
His shadows stir, lifting the note from his palm before vanishing into the dark. He exhales and leans back against the cold wall.
She won't answer. It's what he tells himself, even as his pulse jumps traitorously.
But it's not long before the shadows return, acutally holding her answer in their cold grip.
"Are you really this bored, High Lord?"
He can hear the mocking lilt in her voice as if she's standing before him, one brow arched, lips curved in that infuriating half-smile.
A scoff escapes him before he can stop it. Bored? He's starving. For movement. For freedom. For something—anything—that doesn't reek of stone and damp air.
His next words are quick, ink bleeding into the parchment where his grip tightens.
"Well, my boredom might dissolve if you considered leaving the doors unlocked..."
This time, her reply comes swiftly as if she'd been waiting with quill in hand.
Amusement whispers between the lines. "And have you wander where exactly?"
Of course she'd frame it like that. His fingers tighten around the pen. "Only ever to you, of course," he writes, the lie curling easily across the page. Then adds: "So what are you really up to?"
The shadows take it before he can second-guess himself.
A few minutes later her reply lies before him. "I am currently reading."
His brows rise.
An ordinary admission. Mundane, even. Yet his mind paints it anyway— her draped across silk-drowned sheets, the light tracing the arch of her neck as she turns a page. No crown. Just the quiet intensity she reserves for words on paper, the way her lips might part slightly at a particularly compelling passage.
It's absurd how the image settles under his ribs.
He writes back: "Oh? And what might a Queen be reading?"
***
In her chambers, indeed sprawled in the sheets, Amarantha drags a fingertip down a page, mouth curving. The book is deliciously indecent, penned by some Fae poet who clearly believed pleasure was as vital as breathing.
It is the sort of thing she would never admit to owning if questioned. But here, alone, with firelight licking at the walls and no one to see, she lets herself savor it. Especially after weeks without a moment to herself.
There have been dozens of council meetings concerning the turmoil along the Summer Court's borders, endless discussions about how to respond and prevent such unrest from spreading in the future. A nerve-racking undertaking, to say the least. But now that her plans are finally taking shape, she allows herself this fleeting moment to relax. Too soothe her mind from the constant threat.
When Rhysand's shadows arrive, they do not startle her.
They brush against her wrist first—a whisper of night against her skin—before the note materializes atop the page she'd been reading, right over a particularly lurid description of teeth on skin. She exhales through her nose, plucking it up with two fingers.
Her eyes skim his words, 'and what might a queen be reading' before her gaze flicks to the book's cover—embossed with vines and tangled limbs, the title a sin in gilt lettering.
Well—what harm could it do if she simply...
"Dare to mock my taste, and I am going to haunt you, Rhysand."
She hesitates only a breath before summoning a thread of magic. The note vanishes—and with it, the book itself, torn from her grip in a swirl of crimson light.
Let him choke on that.
The sudden weight of the book against his thigh leaves him staring. It's not some dry political treatise or battle strategy, as he expected—but fiction. The kind with gilt-edged pages and a title that promises sin between its lines.
She sent him her book.
Rhysand stares at the worn leather cover, fingers hovering just above the title before he dares to open it. The spine cracks faintly—a whisper of secrets kept too long between pages.
His eyes scan the first lines. Then the next. And then—
A laugh punches out of him. The first real one in months.
Of course she'd lose herself in something like this—something so shamelessly indulgent it nearly burns in his hands. The poetry alone is scandalous, each word dripping with intent, every metaphor designed to make the blood run hot.
He can't stop reading.
Velaris' libraries housed volumes like this, tucked discreetly behind treatises on diplomacy and magic. But he'd never had time for such distractions.
What a fool he's been.
The shadows curl tighter around him as he reads, the silence of his cell suddenly oppressive.
When he finally lifts his head, the candles have burned lower.
His reply is swift, ink splattering in his haste. "My oh my, who would have thought your taste would include such atrocities. I am in shock." The lie gleams sweetly between the lines.
He adds, before sense can catch up with him: "Perhaps I'll keep the book hostage, so you'll have to fetch it from me. Giving you reason to haunt me all you wish."
Amarantha's fingers still against her knee when his reply appears.
The heat creeps up her neck before she can stop it, blooming beneath her collar like a brand.
Of course he'd say that. Fetch it from him.
Her teeth sink into her lower lip.
She hates him for it. Hates him for the thrill that licks up her spine at the thought of storming into that cell, of wrenching the novel from his grip and seeing his eyes darken in answer.
She reaches for her pen and sends the note without hesitation.
"Oh don't worry. You can keep it since you seem so bored. Maybe you'll even learn something."
When his response arrives, she nearly rolls her eyes at the arrogance woven through his words. "I didn't hear you complain last time, my Queen—but I'd be delighted to explore some of those filthy... instructions, if that's what pleases you."
Her breath stutters. Just once. Just enough to infuriate her.
Because yes—she remembers exactly how skilled he already is, and how little room he had left her for complaint when his hands were otherwise occupied.
Damn him.
She could leave it there. Could let him savor the last word like the victory he so clearly craves.
Of course she doesn't.
“That’s a rather bold claim from someone who was trembling at nothing more than the touch of my hand last time,” she answers. “I’m certain that if I used my mouth next time, taking you inch by inch, you wouldn’t last two minutes before your eyes started doing that thing again.”
When the parchment materializes in Rhysand's palm, he knows he's in trouble.
His pulse quickens halfway through the first line.
Her words paint the scene too vividly.
The warmth of her fingers. The way those sharp, amber-flecked eyes would glance up at him through dark lashes. That soft, wicked mouth hovering just—
A shudder ripples through him, so sharp it nearly aches. His skin feels too tight, his blood too warm. The cell's chill does nothing to smother the fire licking at his veins. He shifts against the wall, the growing bulge in his trousers impossible to ignore.
He reads the lines again. And again. Each word like a brand, each implication a slow unraveling of his control.
By the Cauldron, what does she even mean about the thing with his eyes?
He blames the faint tremor in his script on the dampness clinging to his palms.
"And what, precisely, do my eyes supposedly do?"
"They plead, of course." The letters curve with mocking elegance. "Come now, High Lord. Has no one ever told you about those puppy eyes of yours when you're sad—or, well... compromised?"
Air leaves his lungs in a sound too sharp to be amusement. The parchment crackles in his grip, the edges warping beneath the sudden tension in his fingers.
Unbelievable.
"I see someone's feeling especially impudent tonight. Or are you merely hoping I'll give you the opportunity to turn that rather vivid imagination into reality?"
"It crosses my mind sometimes." The detachment in her script is almost convincing. Almost.
Rhysand's mouth curves. "Invite me and I might let you test that theory."
Her laughter echoes through the stones when the note reaches her—a sound that dissolves into the hollow quiet of her chambers. She can't recall the last time she'd actually laughed like that.
The parchment falls from her fingers, landing atop the growing pile of their exchanges, their lies, their unspoken admissions.
The fire casts long shadows as she turns away, leaving his challenge unanswered.
For now.
***