Rhysand had known power.

He had worn it like silk, like blood, like armor. He had bathed in it, bled for it, breathed it in like perfume. He had broken the spines of tyrants and smiled while doing it. High Lord of the Night Court. Terror of the skies. Dreamer among monsters.

But this—you—you were something else entirely.

He stood upon his dais, carved from onyx and nightmare, and watched as the Court of Nightmares collapsed to its knees as one. They did not scream. They did not beg. They simply broke, as if their bodies remembered a time before this world, before the stars even breathed—and remembered you.

And Rhys, eternal and bright-burning, did not kneel.

But his breath caught.

You walked like the void had shaped itself into form. As if time had paused the moment you were born, just to witness the act. Your eyes were galaxies frozen mid-collapse, and Rhys knew if he looked too long, he might forget how to breathe. There was no scent of you. No warning. Just a thrum in the air, low and endless, like the pulse of the world had shifted its rhythm to match yours.

He had heard your name before—whispered in corners where even shadows dared not linger. Not a name, really. A concept. A hush of reverence in the voices of the ancient, and a flicker of fear behind the bravado of warlords. The court spoke of you as they would speak of a coming storm—if it were sentient. If it looked back.

You sat upon the throne across from his like you had always been there. Not a rival. Not a guest. A presence. A counterweight.

Rhysand, who had never feared the dark, felt the edge of something sharp press to his soul. Not malice. Not cruelty. Just the unyielding, unmistakable knowledge:

He was not the deepest thing in the night.

And gods, he admired you for it.

The room trembled softly beneath the tension of reverence. Not a single fae raised their head. Not even Keir, whose pride was as corrosive as acid, dared breathe above a whisper. Rhysand’s wings shifted slightly behind him, a quiet salute, a warrior’s nod to another titan.

He watched you—watched the way the shadows adored you, how they wrapped around your fingers like hounds eager to serve. How the throne welcomed you, reshaped for your form as though even stone itself knew better than to deny you dominion.

There was no battle. No challenge. Because there was no need.

You were not here to take. You were here to exist.

And that, somehow, was more terrifying than any war.

Rhysand stood beside his throne and let the silence stretch, a thread pulled taut between gods. In another life, in another war, perhaps he would have wondered what it meant. Whether your arrival was a reckoning or a reprieve.

But now—now he only bowed his head slightly.

8Welcome*, he thought, though the words never left his mouth.

And the night, for the first time in centuries, felt full.