Chapter 162 Relaxing Sounds Nice

Chapter 162 Relaxing Sounds Nice
Rae
Bellgrave is quieter than I expected.
Which is ridiculous, considering their entire court is built around sound and all the unsettling ways it can be turned into a weapon.
Still, as Cian’s road releases us onto pale stone beneath a sky the colour of rain-washed silver, I expect noise.
Bells. Singing. Voices layered over one another. Some dramatic fae display designed to remind us that Bellgrave can shatter glass, bone, and possibly my remaining patience with the right note.
Instead, there is only stillness.
The palace ahead is made from white stone veined with silver, its towers rising in smooth, slender lines that catch the wind without whistling. Long ribbons of metal hang between archways, but they do not chime. Water runs through narrow channels carved beside the path, but it makes almost no sound as it moves.
Cian hates it immediately.
I can tell by the way his hand takes mine hostage and how his body angles half a step ahead of me. 
Menace sits upright on my shoulder, three tails puffed around my neck, staring at the palace in suspicion.
Cian’s eyes move over the open courtyard. “Stay close.”
“I was planning to wander off with the sound court after they sent us a mysterious message, actually.”
He looks down at me, and I smile sweetly.
His mouth does not twitch, which tells me he is not in a playful mood.
Then the palace doors open and King Oryn walks out.
The last time I saw him, the world was at war. I remember Bellgrave’s magic moving through the battlefield. I remember hating the strange, awful pressure of a power that did not need to touch skin to make people obey.
King Oryn stops several paces away, close enough to greet us and far enough to show he has no intention of attacking immediately. He is tall and dark-haired, with silver threaded through the braids at his temples and a deep blue coat fastened high at his throat. His face is strong, proud, and unexpectedly open.
He smiles brightly and holds out his hand to Cian.
“Prince Cian of Hollow Hill,” he says. “You are a mighty warrior. A very good opponent to battle against.”
Cian looks at Oryn’s hand as if it may be enchanted, poisoned, or rude.
Oryn keeps smiling. “Though I must apologise for the part I played.”
Cian does not take his hand yet. “Which part?”
Oryn lowers it without offence. “The part where my court stood on the wrong side of fear. I allowed Bellgrave’s magic to become useful before I asked whether it was right. My command and silence were sent into a war that should have ended long before it did.”
I blink a few times and swing my head between the two.
Well.
That is a stronger opening than, surprise, please fix our haunted bell tower.
Oryn’s gaze moves to me, and he bows his head. “Rae Meadowlark.”
My shoulders ease by the smallest amount at the use of my name.
“Bellgrave sent word because we owe you more than a formal apology spoken from a safe distance,” he says. “We helped add to what was placed upon you. We saw the Heartroot and thought of what your power meant for our court. We did not think enough about the person carrying it.”
Huh. I don’t exactly know what to do with that.
Apparently, my face says so, because Oryn’s expression softens.
“We have not called you here today to ask anything of you.”
“Odd reasoning to call someone over,” I say.
Oryn inclines his head. “We asked you here because I would like to redeem my behaviour in the only way Bellgrave can offer.”
I narrow my eyes. “Which is?”
“A sound bath.”
I stare at him.
Cian stares at him.
Menace gives a tiny, startled chirp.
“A bath,” I repeat.
“With sound,” Oryn says.
“No water?”
“No water.”
Menace relaxes a fraction.
“Mortals have sound baths,” Oryn continues, and my attention sharpens. “It is a meditation using bowls, gongs, chimes, and vibration. Bellgrave has older versions of the practice. Before our magic was refined into command and suppression, it was used to settle storms within the body. To help grief move. To teach breath where fear has taught the chest to tighten.”
I may have been raised with all the woo-woo in the mortal realm, but this, this sounds like some serious woo-woo.
Oryn must see how odd I think that is. “You may leave at any point, and Prince Cian may remain beside you. The creature may also remain, provided he does not steal anything vital to the ritual.”
Menace bares all his teeth.
“He makes no promises,” I say. “This is all a very weird gesture. You know that, right? Calling someone over to bathe them in…sound?”
Oryn’s smile softens. “I know. But Bellgrave has taken silence and used it to control. We have taken sound and used it to command. Today, I would like to use it for what it was before we made it useful to war.” His gaze settles on me, steady and careful. “I cannot undo what has been placed upon you, Rae Meadowlark. But if you will allow it, I would like to help you put some of it down.”
I consider it for a moment, and to my great annoyance, some tired part of me likes the idea. It would be nice to put something down for once.
Before I can say that out loud, Cian adds his own condition.
“If I sense any command in the room, we leave.”
Oryn nods. “If you sense command in the room, you may finish what our battle began.”
Well.
That is dramatic and weirdly reassuring.
Cian finally takes Oryn’s hand.
The grip lasts only a moment, but something passes between them. It is definitely not friendship or forgiveness. More like some warrior-to-warrior truce thing. The recognition of two males who have tried to kill each other and are now politely deciding not to make it everyone’s problem today.
Oryn leads us inside.
Bellgrave’s meditation chamber sits deep in the palace, past white corridors and silver-threaded curtains, beyond a doorway carved with open mouths and listening ears. Inside, the room is round, warm, and dim.
There are cushions laid across a dark floor, low bowls of bronze and crystal, wide gongs hanging from curved frames, strings of tiny bells suspended from the ceiling, and shallow channels of water running around the edges of the room.
The air smells of cedar smoke, rain, and something soft I cannot name.
I stand at the threshold, suddenly nervous.
Sound has not always been kind here.
Maybe that is unfair.
Maybe it is wise.
Cian leans close. “We do not have to stay.”
I look at the bowls, the gongs, the cushions, the quiet hands of the Bellgrave attendants waiting with mallets wrapped in pale cloth.
I think of Bright Thorn’s dungeon. Greywater’s still halls. Roads and springs and orchards and everyone looking at me as if I am the thing that must make them whole.
Then I think of Oryn saying they are asking for nothing.
“I want to try,” I whisper.