At the mountain cabin, Feyre lets Rhys inside after recognizing that he will leave if she rejects him. Rhys notices the paintings she made of their family, and Feyre admits she avoided painting his eyes because she was angry, afraid he did not return her feelings, and afraid of how much she wanted him there. When Feyre offers to heat him food, Rhys explains that a female offering food to her mate is a formal acceptance of the bond. Feyre tells him to explain everything before she decides.

Rhys begins with the War, when Amarantha’s forces captured and tortured him and his soldiers. He tells Feyre how Hybern’s ash chains nullified his power, how he planned to kill Amarantha and die trying, and how that plan failed when Jurian confronted her first. Rhys’s father rescued him, but punished him by leaving the ash bolts in his wings, forcing Rhys to recover at the cabin while the war ended and the Treaty was made. Rhys says he never forgave Amarantha, and when she returned centuries later pretending to seek peace, he planned to kill her at a celebration. Instead, Amarantha outmaneuvered him, stole his power, slaughtered half the Court of Nightmares, and forced him into decades of sexual servitude, which Rhys endured to keep her attention away from Velaris and his true court.

Rhys then explains that, during those fifty years, he began seeing glimpses of Feyre through dreams: her life as a human, her painting, and eventually her nightmares after she came to Prythian. Those visions gave him hope, and when he saw Feyre dreaming of Calanmai, he arranged to go to the Spring Court and found her there. Rhys says his first words to her were genuine because he had been searching for her through those dreams. He admits that when he later found Feyre at Tamlin’s manor, he deliberately frightened Tamlin and Feyre so Tamlin would send her away before Amarantha found her. Rhys also reveals that when Feyre gave him Clare Beddor’s name, he did not realize Amarantha would seize and torture Clare; once that happened, he entered Clare’s mind to numb her pain and eventually ended her life to spare her further suffering.

Rhys continues into Under the Mountain. He says Feyre’s arrival horrified him because he knew how vulnerable she was, so he made the bargain, dressed her as he did, and made her drink wine to protect her from remembering the nightly atrocities. He admits that his kiss in the hallway came from jealousy and that Amarantha noticed, which forced him to endure worse afterward. During Feyre’s final trial, Rhys realized she was his mate, tried to kill Amarantha, and felt Feyre die when Amarantha snapped her neck. He clung to the mating bond, helped persuade the High Lords to revive Feyre, and then returned home knowing the bond had fully locked into place when she became Fae. Rhys says he told Mor immediately, spent months trying to stay away, rescued Feyre from her wedding when he felt her desperation, and later refused to force or manipulate her into accepting the bond even after Tamlin locked her up.

By the end of the confession, Rhys admits that he fell in love with Feyre when he picked up the knife to kill Amarantha and has loved her since. Feyre realizes that his cruelty, secrecy, and distance were tied to fear, protection, shame, and love rather than indifference. She brings him the soup, asks directly if he loves her, and after Rhys says yes, Feyre sets the bowl before him and tells him to eat, accepting the mating bond.