You were pulled from sleep by something tugging at your middle, a thread deep inside.

You left Tamlin sleeping in the bed, his body heavy with exhaustion. In a few hours, you would be leaving Under the Mountain and returning home, and you didn't want to wake him sooner than you had to. you prayed you would ever get to sleep that peacefully again.

you knew who summoned you long before you opened the door to the hall and padded down it, stumbling and teetering every now and then as you adjusted to your new body, its new balance and rhythms. you carefully, slowly took a narrow set of stairs upward, up and up, until, to your shock, a trickle of sunlight poured into the stairwell and you found yourself on a small balcony jutting out of the side of the mountain.

you hissed against the brightness, shielding your eyes. you thought it was the middle of the night—you'd completely lost all sense of time in the darkness of the mountain.

Rhysand chuckled softly from where you could vaguely make him out standing along the stone rail. "I forgot that it's been a while for you." your eyes stung from the light, and you remained silent until you could look at the view without a shooting pain going through your head. A land of violet snowcapped mountains greeted you, but the rock of this mountain was brown and bare— not even a blade of grass or a crystal of ice gleamed on it.

you looked at him finally. His membranous wings were out-tucked behind him—but his hands and feet were normal, no talons in sight.

"What do you want?" It didn't come out with the snap you'd intended. Not as you remembered how he'd fought, again and again, to attack Amarantha, to save you.

"Just to say goodbye." A warm breeze ruffled his hair, brushing tendrils of darkness off his shoulders. "Before your beloved whisks you away forever."

"Not forever," you said, wiggling your tattooed fingers for him to see.

"Don't you get a week every month?" Those words, thankfully, came out frosty.

Rhys smiled slightly, his wings rustling and then settling. "How could I forget?"