He hissed at the contact and slid a finger inside me. He swore.
“Feyre—”
But I’d already started to move on him, and he swore again in a long exhale. His lips pressed into my neck, kissing up, up toward my ear.
I let out a moan so loud it drowned out the rain as he slid in a second finger, filling me so much I couldn’t think around it, couldn’t breathe. “That’s it,” he murmured, his lips tracing my ear.
I was sick of my neck and ear getting such attention. I twisted as much as I could, and found him staring at me, at the hand down the front of my pants, watching me move on him.
He was still staring at me when I captured his mouth with my own, biting on his lower lip.
Rhys groaned, plunging his fingers in deeper. Harder.
I didn’t care—I didn’t care one bit about what I was and who I was and where I’d been as I yielded fully to him, opening my mouth. His tongue swept in, moving in a way that I knew exactly what he’d do if he got between my legs.
His fingers plunged in and out, slow and hard, and my very existence narrowed to the feel of them, to the tightness in me ratcheting up with every deep stroke, every echoing thrust of his tongue in my mouth.
“You have no idea how much I—” He cut himself off, and groaned again. “Feyre.”
The sound of my name on his lips was my undoing. Release barreled down my spine, and I cried out, only to have his lips cover mine, as if he could devour the sound. His tongue flicked the roof of my mouth while I shuddered around him, clenching tight. He swore again, breathing hard, fingers stroking me through the last throes of it, until I was limp and trembling in his arms.
I couldn’t breathe hard enough, fast enough, as Rhys withdrew his fingers, pulling back so I could meet his stare. He said, “I wanted to do that when I felt how drenched you were at the Court of Nightmares. I wanted to have you right there in the middle of
everyone. But mostly I just wanted to do this.” His eyes held mine as he brought those fingers to his mouth and sucked on them.
On the taste of me.
I was going to eat him alive. I slid a hand up to his chest to pin him down, but he gripped my wrist. “When you lick me,” he said roughly, “I want to be alone—far away from everyone. Because when you lick me, Feyre,” he said, pressing nipping kisses to my jaw, my neck, “I’m going to let myself roar loud enough to bring down a mountain.”
I was instantly liquid again, and he laughed under his breath.
“And when I lick you,” he said, sliding his arms around me and tucking me in tight to him, “I want you splayed out on a table like my own personal feast.”
I whimpered.
“I’ve had a long, long time to think about how and where I want you,” Rhys said onto the skin of my neck, his fingers sliding under the band of my pants, but stopping just beneath. Their home for the evening. “I have no intention of doing it all in one night. Or in a room where I can’t even fuck you against the wall.”
I shuddered. He remained long and hard against me. I had to feel him, had to get that considerable length inside of me—
“Sleep,” he said. He might as well have commanded me to breathe underwater.
But he began stroking my body again—not to arouse, but to soothe—long, luxurious strokes down my stomach, my sides.
Sleep found me faster than I’d thought.
And maybe it was the wine, or the aftermath of the pleasure he’d wrung from me, but I didn’t have a single nightmare.
I awoke, warm and rested and calm.
Safe.
Sunlight streamed through the filthy window, illuminating the reds and golds in the wall of wing before me—where it had been all night, shielding me from the cold.
Rhysand’s arms were banded around me, his breathing deep and even. And I knew it was just as rare for him to sleep that soundly, peacefully.
What we’d done last night …
Carefully, I twisted to face him, his arms tightening slightly, as if to keep me from vanishing with the morning mist.
His eyes were open when I nestled my head against his arm.
Within the shelter of his wing, we watched each other.
And I realized I might very well be content to do exactly that forever.
I said quietly, “Why did you make that bargain with me? Why demand a week from me every month?”
His violet eyes shuttered.
And I didn’t dare admit what I expected, but it was not,
“Because I wanted to make a statement to Amarantha; because I wanted to piss off Tamlin, and I needed to keep you alive in a way that wouldn’t be seen as merciful.”
“Oh.”
His mouth tightened. “You know—you know there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my people, for my family.”
And I’d been a pawn in that game.
His wing folded back, and I blinked at the watery light. “Bath or no bath?” he said.
I cringed at the memory of the grimy, reeking bathing room a level below. Using it to see to my needs would be bad enough. “I’d rather bathe in a stream,” I said, pushing past the sinking in my gut.
Rhys let out a low laugh and rolled out of bed. “Then let’s get out of here.”
For a heartbeat, I wondered if I’d dreamed up everything that had happened the night before. From the slight, pleasant soreness between my legs, I knew I hadn’t, but …
Maybe it’d be easier to pretend that nothing had happened.
The alternative might be more than I could endure.
We flew for most of the day, far and wide, close to where the forested steppes rose up to meet the Illyrian Mountains. We didn’t speak of the night before—we barely spoke at all.
Another clearing. Another day of playing with my power.
Summoning wings, winnowing, fire and ice and water and—now wind. The wind and breezes that rippled across the sweeping valleys and wheat fields of the Day Court, then whipped up the snow capping their highest peaks.
I could feel the words rising in him as the hours passed. I’d catch him watching me whenever I paused for a break—catch him opening up his mouth … and then shutting it.
It rained at one point, and then turned colder and colder with the cloud cover. We had yet to stay in the woods past dark, and I wondered what sort of creatures might prowl through them.
The sun was indeed sinking by the time Rhys gathered me in his arms and took to the skies.
There was only the wind, and his warmth, and the boom of his powerful wings.
I ventured, “What is it?”
His attention remained on the dark pines sweeping past. “There is one more story I need to tell you.”
I waited. He didn’t continue.
I put my hand against his cheek, the first intimate touch we’d had all day. His skin was chilled, his eyes bleak as they slid to me.
“I don’t walk away—not from you,” I swore quietly.
Rhys roared in pain, arching against me.
I felt the impact—felt blinding pain through the bond that ripped through my own mental shields, felt the shudder of the dozen places the arrows struck him as they shot from bows hidden beneath the forest canopy.
And then we were falling.
Rhys gripped me, and his magic twisted around us in a dark wind, readying to winnow us out—and failed.
Failed, because those were ash arrows through him. Through his wings. They’d tracked us—yesterday, the little magic he’d used with Lucien, they’d somehow tracked it and found us even so far away—
More arrows—
Rhys flung out his power. Too late.
Arrows shredded his wings. Struck his legs.
And I think I was screaming. Not for fear as we plummeted, but for him—for the blood and the greenish sheen on those arrows.
Not just ash, but poison—
A dark wind—his power—slammed into me, and then I was being thrown far and wide as he sent me tumbling beyond the arrows’ range, tumbling through the air—
Rhys’s roar of wrath shook the forest, the mountains beyond.
Birds rose up in waves, taking to the skies, fleeing that bellow.
I slammed into the dense canopy, my body barking in agony as I shattered through wood and pine and leaf. Down and down—
Focus focus focus
I flung out a wave of that hard air that had once shielded me from Tamlin’s temper. Threw it out beneath me like a net.
I collided with an invisible wall so solid I thought my right arm might snap.
But—I stopped falling through the branches.
Thirty feet below, the ground was nearly impossible to see in the growing darkness.
I did not trust that shield to hold my weight for long.
I scrambled across it, trying not to look down, and leaped the last few feet onto a wide pine bough. Hurtling over the wood, I
reached the trunk and clung to it, panting, reordering my mind around the pain, the steadiness of being on ground.
I listened—for Rhys, for his wings, for his next roar. Nothing.
No sign of the archers who he’d been falling to meet. Who he’d thrown me far, far away from.Trembling, I dug my nails into the bark as I listened for him.
Ash arrows. Poisoned ash arrows.
The forest grew ever darker, the trees seeming to wither into skeletal husks. Even the birds hushed themselves.
I stared at my palm—at the eye inked there—and sent a blind thought through it, down that bond. Where are you? Tell me and I’ll come to you. I’ll find you.
There was no wall of onyx adamant at the end of the bond. Only endless shadow.
Things—great, enormous things—were rustling in the forest.
Rhysand. No response.
The last of the light slipped away.
Rhysand, please.
No sound. And the bond between us … silent. I’d always felt it protecting me, seducing me, laughing at me on the other side of my shields. And now … it had vanished.
A guttural howl rippled from the distance, like rocks scraping against each other.
Every hair on my body rose. We never stayed out here past sunset.
I took steadying breaths, nocking one of my few remaining arrows into my bow.
On the ground, something sleek and dark slithered past, the leaves crunching under what looked to be enormous paws tipped in needle-like claws.
Something began screaming. High, panicked screeches. As if it were being torn apart. Not Rhys—something else.
I began shaking again, the tip of my arrow gleaming as it shuddered with me.
Where are you where are you where are you
Let me find you let me find you let me find you I unstrung my bow. Any bit of light might give me away.
Darkness was my ally; darkness might shield me.
It had been anger the first time I’d winnowed—and anger the second time I’d done it.
Rhys was hurt. They had hurt him. Targeted him. And now …
Now …
It was not hot anger that poured through me.
But something ancient, and frozen, and so vicious that it honed my focus into razor-sharpness.
And if I wanted to track him, if I wanted to get to the spot I’d last seen him … I’d become a figment of darkness, too.
I was running down the branch just as something crashed through the brush nearby, snarling and hissing. But I folded myself into smoke and starlight, and winnowed from the edge of my branch and into the tree across from me. The creature below loosed a cry, but I paid it no heed.
I was night; I was wind.
Tree to tree, I winnowed, so fast the beasts roaming the forest floor barely registered my presence. And if I could grow claws and wings … I could change my eyes, too.
I’d hunted at dusk often enough to see how animal eyes worked, how they glowed.
Cool command had my own eyes widening, shifting—a temporary blindness as I winnowed between trees again, running down a wide branch and winnowing through the air for the next—
I landed, and the night forest became bright. And the things prowling on the forest floor below … I didn’t look at them.
No, I kept my attention on winnowing through the trees until I was on the outskirts of the spot where we’d been attacked, all the while tugging on that bond, searching for that familiar wall on the other side of it. Then—
An arrow was stuck in the branches high above me. I winnowed onto the broad bough.
And when I yanked out that length of ash wood, when I felt my immortal body quail in its presence, a low snarl slipped out of me.
I hadn’t been able to count how many arrows Rhys had taken.
How many he’d shielded me from, using his own body.
I shoved the arrow into my quiver, and continued on, circling the area until I spotted another—down by the pine-needle carpet.
I thought frost might have gleamed in my wake as I winnowed in the direction the arrow would have been shot, finding another, and another. I kept them all.
Until I discovered the place where the pine branches were broken and shattered. Finally I smelled Rhys, and the trees around me glimmered with ice as I spied his blood splattered on the branches, the ground.
And ash arrows all around the site.
As if an ambush had been waiting, and unleashed a hail of hundreds, too fast for him to detect or avoid. Especially if he’d been distracted with me. Distracted all day.
I winnowed in bursts through the site, careful not to stay on the ground too long lest the creatures roaming nearby scent me.
He’d fallen hard, the tracks told me. And they’d had to drag him away. Quickly.
They’d tried to hide the blood trail, but even without his mind speaking to me, I could find that scent anywhere. I would find that scent anywhere.
They might have been good at concealing their tracks, but I was better.
I continued my hunt, an ash arrow now nocked into my bow as I read the signs.
Two dozen at least had taken him away, though more had been there for the initial assault. The others had winnowed out, leaving limited numbers to haul him toward the mountains—toward whoever might be waiting.
They were moving swiftly. Deeper and deeper into the woods, toward the slumbering giants of the Illyrian Mountains. His blood had flowed all the way.
Alive, it told me. He was alive—though if the wounds weren’t clotting … The ash arrows were doing their work.
I’d brought down one of Tamlin’s sentinels with a single well-placed ash arrow. I tried not to think about what a barrage of them could do. His roar of pain echoed in my ears.
And through that merciless, unyielding rage, I decided that if Rhys was not alive, if he was harmed beyond repair … I didn’t care who they were and why they had done it.
They were all dead.
Tracks veered from the main group—scouts probably sent to find a spot for the night. I slowed my winnowing, carefully tracing their steps now. Two groups had split, as if trying to hide where they’d gone. Rhys’s scent clung to both.
They’d taken his clothes, then. Because they’d known I’d track them, seen me with him. They’d known I’d come for him. A trap—it was likely a trap.
I paused at the top branches of a tree overlooking where the two groups had cleaved, scanning the ground. One headed deeper into the mountains. One headed along them.
Mountains were Illyrian territory—mountains would run the risk of being discovered by a patrol. They’d assume that’s where I would doubt they would be stupid enough to go. They’d assume I’d think they’d keep to the unguarded, unpatrolled forest.
I weighed my options, smelling the two paths.
They hadn’t counted on the small, second scent that clung there, entwined with his.
And I didn’t let myself think about it as I winnowed toward the mountain tracks, outracing the wind. I didn’t let myself think about the fact that my scent was on Rhys, clinging to him after last night.
He’d changed his clothes that morning—but the smell on his body
… Without taking a bath, I was all over him.
So I winnowed toward him, toward me. And when the narrow cave appeared at the foot of a mountain, the faintest glimmer of light escaping from its mouth … I halted.
A whip cracked.
And every word, every thought and feeling, went out of me.
Another whip—and another.
I slung my bow over my shoulder and pulled out a second ash arrow. It was quick work to bind the two arrows together, so that a tip gleamed on either end—and to do the same for two more. And when I was done, when I looked at the twin makeshift daggers in either hand, when that whip sounded again … I winnowed into the cave.
They’d picked one with a narrow entrance that opened into a wide, curving tunnel, setting up their little camp around the bend to avoid detection.
The scouts at the front—two High Fae males with unmarked armor who I didn’t recognize—didn’t notice as I went past.
Two other scouts patrolled just inside the cave mouth, watching those at the front. I was there and vanished before they could spot me. I rounded the corner, time slipping and bending, and my night-dark eyes burned at the light. I changed them, winnowing between one blink and the next, past the other two guards.
And when I beheld the four others in that cave, beheld the tiny fire they’d built and what they’d already done to him … I pushed against the bond between us—almost sobbing as I felt that adamant wall … But there was nothing behind it. Only silence.
They’d found strange chains of bluish stone to spread his arms, suspending him from either wall of the cave. His body sagged from them, his back a ravaged slab of meat. And his wings …
They’d left the ash arrows through his wings. Seven of them.
His back to me, only the sight of the blood running down his skin told me he was alive.
And it was enough—it was enough that I detonated.
I winnowed to the two guards holding twin whips.
The others around them shouted as I dragged my ash arrows across their throats, deep and vicious, just like I’d done countless times while hunting. One, two—then they were on the ground, whips limp. Before the guards could attack, I winnowed again to the ones nearest.
Blood sprayed.
Winnow, strike; winnow, strike.
Those wings—those beautiful, powerful wings—
The guards at the mouth of the cave had come rushing in.
They were the last to die.
And the blood on my hands felt different from what it had been like Under the Mountain. This blood … I savored. Blood for blood.
Blood for every drop they’d spilled of his.
Silence fell in the cave as their final shouts finished echoing, and I winnowed in front of Rhys, shoving the bloody ash daggers into my belt. I gripped his face. Pale—too pale.
But his eyes opened to slits and he groaned.
I didn’t say anything as I lunged for the chains holding him, trying not to notice the bloody handprints I’d left on him. The
chains were like ice—worse than ice. They felt wrong. I pushed past the pain and strangeness of them, and the weakness that barreled down my spine, and unlatched him.
His knees slammed into the rock so hard I winced, but I rushed to the other arm, still upraised. Blood flowed down his back, his front, pooling in the dips between his muscles.
“Rhys,” I breathed. I almost dropped to my own knees as I felt a flicker of him behind his mental shields, as if the pain and exhaustion had reduced it to window-thinness. His wings, peppered with those arrows, remained spread—so painfully taut that I winced. “Rhys—we need to winnow home.”
His eyes opened again, and he gasped, “Can’t.”
Whatever poison was on those arrows, then his magic, his strength …
But we couldn’t stay here, not when the other group was nearby. So I said, “Hold on,” and gripped his hand before I threw us into night and smoke.
Winnowing was so heavy, as if all the weight of him, all that power, dragged me back. It was like wading through mud, but I focused on the forest, on a moss-shrouded cave I’d seen earlier that day while slaking my thirst, tucked into the side of the riverbank. I’d peeked into it, and nothing but leaves had been within. At least it was safe, if not a bit damp. Better than being in the open—and it was our only option.
Every mile was an effort. But I kept my grip on his hand, terrified that if I let go, I’d leave him somewhere I might never be able to find, and—
And then we were there, in that cave, and he grunted in agony as we slammed into the wet, cold stone floor.
“Rhys,” I pleaded, stumbling in the dark—such impenetrable dark, and with those creatures around us, I didn’t risk a fire—
But he was so cold, and still bleeding.
I willed my eyes to shift again, and my throat tightened at the damage. The lashings across his back kept dribbling blood, but the wings … “I have to get these arrows out.”
He grunted again, hands braced on the floor. And the sight of him like that, unable to even make a sly comment or half smile …
I went up to his wing. “This is going to hurt.” I clenched my jaw as I studied the way they’d pierced the beautiful membrane. I’d have to snap the arrows in two and slide each end out.
No—not snapping. I’d have to cut it—slowly, carefully, smoothly, to keep any shards and rough bits from causing further damage.
Who knew what an ash splinter might do if it got stuck in there?
“Do it,” he panted, his voice hoarse.
There were seven arrows in total: three in this wing, four in the other. They’d removed the ones from his legs, for whatever reason—the wounds already half-clotted.
Blood dripped on the floor.
I took the knife from where it was strapped to my thigh, studied the entry wound, and gently gripped the shaft. He hissed. I paused.
“Do it,” Rhys repeated, his knuckles white as he fisted his hands on the ground.
I set the small bit of serrated edge against the arrow and began sawing as gently as I could. The blood-soaked muscles of his back shifted and tensed, and his breathing turned sharp, uneven.
Too slow—I was going too slowly.
But any faster and it might hurt him more, might damage the sensitive wing.
“Did you know,” I said over the sound of my sawing, “that one summer, when I was seventeen, Elain bought me some paint?
We’d had just enough to spend on extra things, and she bought me and Nesta presents. She didn’t have enough for a full set, but bought me red and blue and yellow. I used them to the last drop, stretching them as much as I could, and painted little decorations in our cottage.”
His breath heaved out of him, and I finally sawed through the shaft. I didn’t let him know what I was doing before I yanked out the arrowhead in a smooth pull.
He swore, body locking up, and blood gushed out—then stopped.
I almost loosed a sigh of relief. I set to work on the next arrow.
“I painted the table, the cabinets, the doorway … And we had this old, black dresser in our room—one drawer for each of us. We didn’t have much clothing to put in there, anyway.” I got through
the second arrow faster, and he braced himself as I tugged it out.
Blood flowed, then clotted. I started on the third. “I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer,” I said, sawing and sawing. “Little roses and begonias and irises. And for Nesta … ” The arrow clattered to the ground and I ripped out the other end.
I watched the blood flow and stop—watched him slowly lower the wing to the ground, his body trembling.
“Nesta,” I said, starting on the other wing, “I painted flames for her. She was always angry, always burning. I think she and Amren would be fast friends. I think she would like Velaris, despite herself. And I think Elain—Elain would like it, too. Though she’d probably cling to Azriel, just to have some peace and quiet.”
I smiled at the thought—at how handsome they would be together. If the warrior ever stopped quietly loving Mor. I doubted it. Azriel would likely love Mor until he was a whisper of darkness between the stars.
I finished the fourth arrow and started on the fifth.
Rhys’s voice was raw as he said to the floor, “What did you paint for yourself?”
I drew out the fifth, moving to the sixth before saying, “I painted the night sky.”
He stilled. I went on, “I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky.” I finished the sixth, and was well on my way sawing through the seventh before I said, “I never knew why. I rarely went outside at night—usually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder … ” I pulled out the seventh and final arrow. “I wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire—but that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn’t bother to look, but to only fear it … Then I didn’t particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place—looking for you all.”
The blood stopped flowing, and his other wing lowered to the ground. Slowly, the lashes on his back began to clot. I walked
around to where he was bowed over the floor, hands braced on the rock, and knelt.
His head lifted. Pain-filled eyes, bloodless lips. “You saved me,”
he rasped.
“You can explain who they were later.”
“Ambush,” Rhys said anyway, his eyes scanning my face for signs of hurt. “Hybern soldiers with ancient chains from the king himself, to nullify my power. They must have traced the magic I used yesterday … I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of him. I brushed back his dark hair. That was why I hadn’t been able to use the bond, to speak mind to mind.
“Rest,” I said, and moved to retrieve the blanket from my pack.
It’d have to do. He gripped my wrist before I could rise. His eyelids lowered. Consciousness ripped from him—too fast. Much too fast and too heavy.
“I was looking for you, too,” Rhys murmured.
And passed out.
I slept beside him, offering what warmth I could, monitoring the cave entrance the entirety of the night. The beasts in the forest prowled past in an endless parade, and only in the gray light before dawn did their snarls and hissing fade.
Rhys was unconscious as watery sunlight painted the stone walls, his skin clammy. I checked his wounds and found them barely healed, an oily sheen oozing from them.
And when I put a hand on his brow, I swore at the heat.
Poison had coated those arrows. And that poison remained in his body.
The Illyrian camp was so distant that my own powers, feeble from the night before, wouldn’t get us far.
But if they had those horrible chains to nullify his powers, had ash arrows to bring him down, then that poison …
An hour passed. He didn’t get better. No, his golden skin was pale—paling. His breaths were shallow. “Rhys,” I said softly.
He didn’t move. I tried shaking him. If he could tell me what the poison was, maybe I could try to find something to help him … He did not awaken.
Around midday, panic gripped me in a tight fist.
I didn’t know anything about poisons or remedies. And out here, so far from anyone … Would Cassian track us down in time?
Would Mor winnow in? I tried to rouse Rhys over and over.
The poison had dragged him down deep. I would not risk waiting for help to arrive.
I would not risk him.
So I bundled him in as many layers as I could spare, yet took my cloak, kissed his brow, and left.
We were only a few hundred yards from where I’d been hunting the night before, and as I emerged from the cave, I tried not to look at the tracks of the beasts who had passed through, right above us. Enormous, horrible tracks.
What I was to hunt would be worse.
We were already near running water—so I made my trap close by, building my snare with hands that I refused to let shake.
I placed the cloak—mostly new, rich, lovely—in the center of my snare. And I waited.
An hour. Two.
I was about to start bargaining with the Cauldron, with the Mother, when a creeping, familiar silence fell over the wood.
Rippling toward me, the birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped sighing in the pines.
And when a crack sounded through the forest, followed by a screech that hollowed out my ears, I nocked an arrow into my bow and set off to see the Suriel.
It was as horrific as I remembered:
Tattered robes barely concealing a body made of not skin, but what looked to be solid, worn bone. Its lipless mouth held too-large teeth, and its fingers—long, spindly—clicked against each other while it weighed the fine cloak I’d laid in the center of my snare, as if the cloth had been blown in on a wind.
“Feyre Cursebreaker,” it said, turning toward me, in a voice that was both one and many.
I lowered my bow. “I have need of you.”
Time—I was running out of time. I could feel it, that urgency begging me to hurry through the bond.
“What fascinating changes a year has wrought on you—on the world,” it said.
A year. Yes, it had been over a year now since I’d first crossed the wall.
“I have questions,” I said.
It smiled, each of those stained, too-large brown teeth visible.
“You have two questions.”
An answer and an order.
I didn’t waste time; not with Rhys, not when this wood might be full of enemies hunting for us.
“What poison was used on those arrows?”
“Bloodbane,” it said.
I didn’t know that poison—had never heard of it.
“Where do I find the cure?”
The Suriel clicked its bone fingers against each other, as if the answer lay inside the sound. “In the forest.”
I hissed, my brows flattening. “Please—please don’t be cryptic.
What is the cure?”
The Suriel cocked its head, the bone gleaming in the light. “Your blood. Give him your blood, Cursebreaker. It is rich with the healing gift of the High Lord of the Dawn. It shall spare him from the bloodbane’s wrath.”
“That’s it?” I pushed. “How much blood?”
“A few mouthfuls will do.” A hollow, dry wind—not at all like the misty, cold veils that usually drifted past—brushed my face. “I helped you before. I have helped you now. And you will free me before I lose my patience, Cursebreaker.”
Some primal, lingering human part of me trembled as I took in the snare around its legs, pinning it to the ground. Perhaps this time, the Suriel had let itself be caught. And knew how to free itself—had learned it the moment I’d spared it from the naga.
A test—of honor. And a favor. For the arrow I’d shot to save it last year.
But I nocked an ash arrow into my bow, cringing at the sheen of poison coating it. “Thank you for your help,” I said, bracing myself for flight should it charge at me.
The Suriel’s stained teeth clacked against each other. “If you wish to speed your mate’s healing, in addition to your blood, a pink-flowered weed sprouts by the river. Make him chew it.”
I fired my arrow at the snare before I finished hearing its words.
The trap sprang free. And the word clicked through me.
Mate.
“What did you say?”
The Suriel rose to its full height, towering over me even from across the clearing. I had not realized that despite the bone, it was muscled— powerful.
“If you wish to … ” The Suriel paused, and grinned, showing nearly all of those brown, thick teeth. “You did not know, then.”
“Say it,” I gritted out.
“The High Lord of the Night Court is your mate.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I was breathing.
“Interesting,” the Suriel said.
Mate.
Mate.
Mate.
Rhysand was my mate.
Not lover, not husband, but more than that. A bond so deep, so permanent that it was honored over all others. Rare, cherished.
Not Tamlin’s mate.
Rhysand’s.
I was jealous, and pissed off …
You’re mine.
The words slipped out of me, low and twisted, “Does he know?”
The Suriel clenched the robes of its new cloak in its bone-fingers. “Yes.”
“For a long while?”
“Yes. Since—”
“No. He can tell me—I want to hear it from his lips.”
The Suriel cocked its head. “You are—you are feeling too much, too fast. I cannot read it.”
“How can I possibly be his mate?” Mates were equals—
matched, at least in some ways.
“He is the most powerful High Lord to ever walk this earth. You are … new. You are made of all seven High Lords. Unlike anything. Are you two not similar in that? Are you not matched?”
Mate. And he knew—he’d known.
I glanced toward the river, as if I could see all the way to the cave, to where Rhysand slept.
When I looked back at the Suriel, it was gone.
I found the pink weed, and ripped it out of the ground as I stalked back to the cave.
Mercifully, Rhys was half-awake, the layers I’d thrown on him now scattered across the blanket, and he gave me a strained smile as I entered.
I chucked the weed at him, showering his bare chest with soil.
“Chew on that.”
He blinked blearily at me.
Mate.
But he obeyed, frowning at the plant before he plucked off a few leaves and started chewing. He grimaced as he swallowed. I tore off my jacket, shoved up my sleeve, and strode to him. He’d known, and kept it from me.
Had the others known? Had they guessed?
He’d—he’d promised not to lie, not to keep things from me.
And this—this most important thing in my immortal existence …
I drew a dagger across my forearm, the cut long and deep, and dropped to my knees before him. I didn’t feel the pain. “Drink this.
Now.”
Rhys blinked again, brows raising, but I didn’t give him the chance to object before I gripped the back of his head, lifted my arm to his mouth, and shoved him against my skin.
He paused as my blood touched his lips. Then his mouth opened wider, his tongue brushing my arm as he sucked in my blood. One mouthful. Two. Three.
I yanked back my arm, the wound already healing, and shoved down my sleeve.
“You don’t get to ask questions,” I said, and he looked up at me, exhaustion and pain lining his face, my blood shining on his lips.
Part of me hated the words, for acting like this while he was wounded, but I didn’t care. “You only get to answer them. And nothing more.”
Wariness flooded his eyes, but he nodded, biting off another mouthful of the weed and chewing.
I stared down at him, the half-Illyrian warrior who was my soul-bonded partner.
“How long have you known that I’m your mate?”
Rhys stilled. The entire world stilled.
He swallowed. “Feyre.”
“How long have you known that I’m your mate?”
“You … You ensnared the Suriel?” How he’d pieced it together, I didn’t give a shit.
“I said you don’t get to ask questions.”
I thought something like panic might have flashed over his features. He chewed again on the plant—as if it instantly helped, as if he knew that he wanted to be at his full strength to face this, face me. Color was already blooming on his cheeks, perhaps from whatever healing was in my blood.
“I suspected for a while,” Rhys said, swallowing once more. “I knew for certain when Amarantha was killing you. And when we stood on the balcony Under the Mountain—right after we were freed, I felt it snap into place between us. I think when you were Made, it … it heightened the smell of the bond. I looked at you then and the strength of it hit me like a blow.”
He’d gone wide-eyed, had stumbled back as if shocked—
terrified. And had vanished.
That had been over half a year ago.
My blood pounded in my ears. “When were you going to tell me?”
“Feyre.”
“When were you going to tell me? ”
“I don’t know. I wanted to yesterday. Or whenever you’d noticed that it wasn’t just a bargain between us. I hoped you might realize when I took you to bed, and—”
“Do the others know?”
“Amren and Mor do. Azriel and Cassian suspect.”
My face burned. They knew—they— “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were in love with him; you were going to marry him. And then you … you were enduring everything and it didn’t feel right to tell you.”
“I deserved to know.”
“The other night you told me you wanted a distraction, you wanted fun. Not a mating bond. And not to someone like me—a mess.” So the words I’d spat after the Court of Nightmares had haunted him.
“You promised—you promised no secrets, no games. You promised.”
Something in my chest was caving in on itself. Some part of me I’d thought long gone.
“I know I did,” Rhys said, the glow returning to his face. “You think I didn’t want to tell you? You think I liked hearing you wanted me only for amusement and release? You think it didn’t drive me out of my mind so completely that those bastards shot me out of the sky because I was too busy wondering if I should just tell you, or wait—or maybe take whatever pieces that you offered me and be happy with it? Or that maybe I should let you go so you don’t have a lifetime of assassins and High Lords hunting you down for being with me?”
“I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear you explain how you assumed that you knew best, that I couldn’t handle it—”
“I didn’t do that—”
“I don’t want to hear you tell me that you decided I was to be kept in the dark while your friends knew, while you all decided what was right for me—”
“Feyre—”
“Take me back to the Illyrian camp. Now.”
He was panting in great, rattling gulps. “Please.”
But I stormed to him and grabbed his hand. “Take me back now.”
And I saw the pain and sorrow in his eyes. Saw it and didn’t care, not as that thing in my chest was twisting and breaking. Not as my heart—my heart—ached, so viciously that I realized it’d somehow been repaired in these past few months. Repaired by him.
And now it hurt.
Rhys saw all that and more on my face, and I saw nothing but agony in his as he rallied his strength and, grunting in pain, winnowed us into the Illyrian camp.
We slammed into freezing mud right outside the little stone house.
I think he’d meant to winnow us into it, but his powers had given out. Across the yard, I spied Cassian—and Mor—at the window of the house, eating breakfast. Their eyes went wide, and then they were rushing for the door.
“Feyre,” Rhys groaned, bare arms buckling as he tried to rise.
I left him lying in the mud and stormed toward the house.
The door flung open, and Cassian and Mor were sprinting for us, scanning every inch of our bodies. Cassian realized I was in one piece and hurtled for Rhys, who was struggling to rise, mud covering his bare skin, but Mor—Mor saw my face.
I went up to her, cold and hollow. “I want you to take me somewhere far away,” I said. “Right now.” I needed to get away—
needed to think, to have space and quiet and calm.
Mor looked between us, biting her lip.
“Please,” I said, and my voice broke on the word.
Behind me, Rhys moaned my name again.
Mor scanned my face once more, and gripped my hand.
We vanished into wind and night.
Brightness assaulted me, and I gobbled up my surroundings: mountains and snow all around, fresh and gleaming in the midday light, so clean against the dirt on me.
We were high up on the peaks, and about a hundred yards away, a log cabin stood tucked between two upper fangs of the mountains, shielding it from the wind. The house was dark—there was nothing around it for as far as I could see.
“The house is warded, so no one can winnow in. No one can get beyond this point, actually, without our family’s permission.”
Mor stepped ahead, snow crunching under her boots. Without the wind, the day was mild enough to remind me that spring had dawned in the world, though I’d bet it would be freezing once the sun vanished. I trailed after her, something zinging against my skin. “You’re—allowed in,” Mor said.
“Because I’m his mate?”
She kept wading through the knee-high snow. “Did you guess, or did he tell you?”
“The Suriel told me. After I went to hunt it for information on how to heal him.”
She swore. “Is he—is he all right?”
“He’ll live,” I said. She didn’t ask any other questions. And I wasn’t feeling generous enough to supply further information. We reached the door to the cabin, which she unlocked with a wave of her hand.
A main, wood-paneled room consisting of a kitchen to the right, a living area with a leather sofa covered in furs to the left; a small hall in the back that led to two bedrooms and a shared bathing room, and nothing else.
“We got sent up here for ‘reflection’ when we were younger,”
Mor said. “Rhys used to smuggle in books and booze for me.”
I cringed at the sound of his name. “It’s perfect,” I said tightly.
Mor waved a hand, and a fire sprang to life in the hearth, heat flooding the room. Food landed on the counters of the kitchen, and something in the pipes groaned. “No need for firewood,” she said. “It’ll burn until you leave.” She lifted a brow as if to ask when that would be.
I looked away. “Please don’t tell him where I am.”
“He’ll try to find you.”
“Tell him I don’t want to be found. Not for a while.”
Mor bit her lip. “It’s not my business—”
“Then don’t say anything.”
She did, anyway. “He wanted to tell you. And it killed him not to.
But … I’ve never seen him so happy as he is when he’s with you.
And I don’t think that has anything to do with you being his mate.”
“I don’t care.” She fell silent, and I could feel the words she wanted to say building up. So I said, “Thank you for bringing me here.” A polite dismissal.
Mor bowed her head. “I’ll check back in three days. There are clothes in the bedrooms, and all the hot water you want. The house is spelled to take care of you—merely wish or speak for things, and it’ll be done.”
I only wanted solitude and quiet, but … a hot bath sounded like a nice way to start.
She left the cottage before I could say anything else.
Alone, no one around for miles, I stood in the silent cabin and stared at nothing.
There was a deep, sunken tub in the floor of the mountain cabin—
large enough to accommodate Illyrian wings. I filled it with water near-scalding, not caring how the magic of this house operated, only that it worked. Hissing and wincing, I climbed in.
Three days without a bath and I could have wept at the warmth and cleanliness of it.
No matter that I’d once gone weeks without one—not when drawing hot water for it in my family’s cottage had been more trouble than it was worth. Not when we didn’t even have a bathtub and it required buckets and buckets to get clean.
I washed with dark soap that smelled of smoke and pine, and when I was done, I sat there, watching the steam slither amongst the few candles.
Mate.
The word chased me from the bath sooner than I wanted, and hounded me as I pulled on the clothes I’d found in a drawer of the bedroom: dark leggings, a large, cream-colored sweater that hung to mid-thigh, and thick socks. My stomach grumbled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the day before, because—
Because he’d been injured, and I’d gone out of my mind—
absolutely insane—when he’d been taken from me, shot out of the sky like a bird.
I’d acted on instinct, on a drive to protect him that had come from so deep in me …
So deep in me—
I found a container of soup on the wood counter that Mor must have brought in, and scrounged up a cast iron pot to heat it.
Fresh, crusty bread sat near the stove, and I ate half of it while waiting for the soup to warm.
He’d suspected it before I’d even freed us from Amarantha.
My wedding day … Had he interrupted to spare me from a horrible mistake or for his own ends? Because I was his mate, and letting me bind myself to someone else was unacceptable?
I ate my dinner in silence, with only the murmuring fire for company.
And beneath the barrage of my thoughts, a throb of relief.
My relationship with Tamlin had been doomed from the start. I had left—only to find my mate. To go to my mate.
If I were looking to spare us both from embarrassment, from rumor, only that—only that I had found my true mate—would do the trick.
I was not a lying piece of traitorous filth. Not even close. Even if Rhys … Rhys had known I was his mate.
While I’d shared a bed with Tamlin. For months and months.
He’d known I was sharing a bed with him, and hadn’t let it show.
Or maybe he didn’t care.
Maybe he didn’t want the bond. Had hoped it’d vanish.
I’d owed nothing to Rhys then—had nothing to apologize for.
But he’d known I’d react badly. That it’d hurt me more than help me.
And what if I had known?
What if I had known that Rhys was my mate while I’d loved Tamlin?
It didn’t excuse his not telling me. Didn’t excuse the recent weeks, when I’d hated myself so much for wanting him so badly—
when he should have told me. But … I understood.
I washed the dishes, swept the crumbs off the small dining table between the kitchen and living area, and climbed into one of the beds.
Just last night, I’d been curled beside him, counting his breaths to make sure he didn’t stop making them. The night before, I’d been in his arms, his fingers between my legs, his tongue in my mouth. And now … though the cabin was warm, the sheets were cold. The bed was large—empty.
Through the small glass window, the snow-blasted land around me glowed blue in the moonlight. The wind was a hollow moan, brushing great, sparkling drifts of snow past the cabin.
I wondered if Mor had told him where I was.
Wondered if he’d indeed come looking for me.
Mate.
My mate.
Sunlight on snow awoke me, and I squinted at the brightness, cursing myself for not closing the curtains. It took me a moment to remember where I was; why I was in this isolated cabin, deep in the mountains of—I did’t know what mountains these were.
Rhys had once mentioned a favorite retreat that Mor and Amren had burned to cinders in a fight. I wondered if this was it; if it had been rebuilt. Everything was comfortable, worn, but in relatively good shape.
Mor and Amren had known.
I couldn’t decide if I hated them for it.
No doubt, Rhys had ordered them to keep quiet, and they’d respected his wishes, but …
I made the bed, fixed breakfast, washed the dishes, and then stood in the center of the main living space.
I’d run away.
Precisely how Rhys expected me to run—how I’d told him anyone in their right mind would run from him. Like a coward, like a fool, I’d left him injured in the freezing mud.
I’d walked away from him—a day after I’d told him he was the only thing I’d never walk away from.
I’d demanded honesty, and at the first true test, I hadn’t even let him give it to me. I hadn’t granted him the consideration of hearing him out.
You see me.
Well, I’d refused to see him. Maybe I’d refused to see what was right in front of me.
I’d walked away.
And maybe … maybe I shouldn’t have.
Boredom hit me halfway through the day.
Supreme, unrelenting boredom, thanks to being trapped inside while the snow slowly melted under the mild spring day, listening to it drip-drip-dripping off the roof.
It made me nosy—and once I’d finished going through the drawers and closets of both bedrooms (clothes, old bits of ribbon, knives and weapons tucked between as if one of them had chucked them in and just forgotten), the kitchen cabinets (food, preserved goods, pots and pans, a stained cookbook), and the living area (blankets, some books, more weapons hidden everywhere), I ventured into the supply closet.
For a High Lord’s retreat, the cabin was … not common, because everything had been made and appointed with care, but
… casual. As if this were the sole place where they might all come, and pile into beds and on the couch, and not be anyone but themselves, taking turns with who cooked that night and who hunted and who cleaned and—
A family.
It felt like a family—the one I’d never quite had, had never dared really hope for. Had stopped expecting when I’d grown used to the space and formality of living in a manor. To being a symbol for a broken people, a High Priestess’s golden idol and puppet.
I opened the storeroom door, a blast of cold greeting me, but candles sputtered to life, thanks to the magic that kept the place hospitable. Shelves free of dust (another magical perk, no doubt) gleamed with more food stores. Books, sporting equipment, packs and ropes and, big surprise, more weapons. I sorted through it all, these remnants of adventures past and future, and almost missed them as I walked past.
Half a dozen cans of paint.
Paper, and a few canvases. Brushes, old and flecked with paint from lazy hands.
There were other art supplies—pastels and watercolors, what looked to be charcoal for sketching, but … I stared at the paint, the brushes.
Which of them had tried to paint while stuck here—or enjoying a holiday with them all?
I told myself my hands were trembling with the cold as I reached for the paint and pried open the lid.
Still fresh. Probably from the magic preserving this place.
I peered into the dark, gleaming interior of the can I’d opened: blue.
And then I started gathering supplies.
I painted all day.
And when the sun vanished, I painted all through the night.
The moon had set by the time I washed my hands and face and neck and stumbled into bed, not even bothering to undress before unconsciousness swept me away.
I was up, brush in hand, before the spring sun could resume its work thawing the mountains around me.
I paused only long enough to eat. The sun was setting again, exhausted from the dent it’d made in the layer of snow outside, when a knock sounded on the front door.
Splattered in paint—the cream-colored sweater utterly wrecked
—I froze.
Another knock, light, but insistent. Then—“Please don’t be dead.”
I didn’t know whether it was relief or disappointment that sank in my chest as I opened the door and found Mor huffing hot air into her cupped hands.
She looked at the paint on my skin, in my hair. At the brush in my hand.
And then at what I had done.
Mor stepped in from the brisk spring night and let out a low whistle as she shut the door. “Well, you’ve certainly been busy.”
Indeed.
I’d painted nearly every surface in the main room.
And not with just broad swaths of color, but with decorations—
little images. Some were basic: clusters of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening
and deepening into fall leaves. I’d painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window; leaves and crackling flames around the dining table.
But in between the intricate decorations, I’d painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren … and Rhys.
Mor went up to the large hearth, where I’d painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid, pretty bit of paint. But from the couch … “Illyrian wings,” she said. “Ugh, they’ll never stop gloating about it.”
But she went to the window, which I’d framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. “Nice,” she said, surveying the room again.
Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. “Why,” she said, “are Amren’s eyes there?”
Indeed, right above the door, in the center of the archway, I’d painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. “Because she’s always watching.”
Mor snorted. “That simply won’t do. Paint my eyes next to hers.
So the males of this family will know we’re both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.”
“They do that?”
“They used to.” Before Amarantha. “Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they’d come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they’ll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.”
A smile tugged on my lips. “Who does this paint belong to?”
“Amren,” Mor said, rolling her eyes. “We were all here one summer, and she wanted to teach herself to paint. She did it for about two days before she got bored and decided to start hunting poor creatures instead.”
A quiet chuckle rasped out of me. I strode to the table, which I’d used as my main surface for blending and organizing paints. And maybe I was a coward, but I kept my back to her as I said, “Any news from my sisters?”
Mor started rifling through the cabinets, either to look for food or assess what I needed. She said over a shoulder, “No. Not yet.”
“Is he … hurt?” I’d left him in the freezing mud, injured and working the poison out of his system. I’d tried not to dwell on it while I’d painted.
“Still recovering, but fine. Pissed at me, of course, but he can shove it.”
I combined Mor’s yellow gold with the red I’d used for the Illyrian wings, and blended until vibrant orange emerged. “Thank you—for not telling him I was here.”
A shrug. Food began popping onto the counter: fresh bread, fruit, containers of something that I could smell from across the kitchen and made me nearly groan with hunger. “You should talk to him, though. Make him stew over it, of course, but … hear him out.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Rhys always has his reasons, and he might be arrogant as all hell, but he’s usually right about his instincts. He makes mistakes, but … You should hear him out.”
I’d already decided that I would, but I said, “How was your visit to the Court of Nightmares?”
She paused, her face going uncharacteristically pale. “Fine. It’s always a delight to see my parents. As you might guess.”
“Is your father healing?” I added the cobalt of Azriel’s Siphons to the orange and mixed until a rich brown appeared.
A small, grim smile. “Slowly. I might have snapped some more bones when I visited. My mother has since banished me from their private quarters. Such a shame.”
Some feral part of me beamed in savage delight at that. “A pity indeed,” I said. I added a bit of frost white to lighten the brown, checked it against the gaze she slid to me, and grabbed a stool to stand on as I began painting the threshold. “Rhys really makes you do this often? Endure visiting them?”
Mor leaned against the counter. “Rhys gave me permission the day he became High Lord to kill them all whenever I pleased. I attend these meetings, go to the Court of Nightmares, to …
remind them of that sometimes. And to keep communication between our two courts flowing, however strained it might be. If I were to march in there tomorrow and slaughter my parents, he
wouldn’t blink. Perhaps be inconvenienced by it, but … he would be pleased.”
I focused on the speck of caramel brown I painted beside Amren’s eyes. “I’m sorry—for all that you endured.”
“Thank you,” she said, coming over to watch me. “Visiting them always leaves me raw.”
“Cassian seemed concerned.” Another prying question.
She shrugged. “Cassian, I think, would also savor the opportunity to shred that entire court to pieces. Starting with my parents. Maybe I’ll let him do it one year as a present. Him and Azriel both. It’d make a perfect solstice gift.”
I asked perhaps a bit too casually. “You told me about the time with Cassian, but did you and Azriel ever … ?”
A sharp laugh. “No. Azriel? After that time with Cassian, I swore off any of Rhys’s friends. Azriel’s got no shortage of lovers, though, don’t worry. He’s better at keeping them secret than we are, but … he has them.”
“So if he were ever interested would you … ?”
“The issue, actually, wouldn’t be me. It’d be him. I could peel off my clothes right in front of him and he wouldn’t move an inch. He might have defied and proved those Illyrian pricks wrong at every turn, but it won’t matter if Rhys makes him Prince of Velaris—he’ll see himself as a bastard-born nobody, and not good enough for anyone. Especially me.”
“But … are you interested?”
“Why are you asking such things?” Her voice became tight, sharp. More wary than I’d ever heard.
“I’m still trying to figure out how you all work together.”
A snort, that wariness gone. I tried not to look too relieved. “We have five centuries of tangled history for you to sort through. Good luck.”
Indeed. I finished her eyes—honey brown to Amren’s quicksilver. But almost in answer, Mor declared, “Paint Azriel’s.
Next to mine. And Cassian’s next to Amren’s.”
I lifted my brows.
Mor gave me an innocent smile. “So we can all watch over you.”
I just shook my head and hopped off the stool to start figuring out how to paint hazel eyes.
Mor said quietly, “Is it so bad—to be his mate? To be a part of our court, our family, tangled history and all?”
I blended the paint in the small dish, the colors swirling together like so many entwined lives. “No,” I breathed. “No, it’s not.”
And I had my answer.
Mor stayed overnight, even going so far as to paint some rudimentary stick figures on the wall beside the storeroom door.
Three females with absurdly long, flowing hair that all resembled hers; and three winged males, who she somehow managed to make look puffed up on their own sense of importance. I laughed every time I saw it.
She left after breakfast, having to walk out to where the no-winnowing shield ended, and I waved to her distant, shivering figure before she vanished into nothing.
I stared across the glittering white expanse, thawed enough that bald patches peppered it—revealing bits of winter-white grass reaching toward the blue sky and mountains. I knew summer had to eventually reach even this melting dreamland, for I’d found fishing poles and sporting equipment that suggested warm-weather usage, but it was hard to imagine snow and ice becoming soft grass and wildflowers.
Brief as a glimmering spindrift, I saw myself there: running through the meadow that slumbered beneath the thin crust of snow, splashing through the little streams already littering the floor, feasting on fat summer berries as the sun set over the mountains …
And then I would go home to Velaris, where I would finally walk through the artists’ quarter, and enter those shops and galleries and learn what they knew, and maybe—maybe one day—I would open my own shop. Not to sell my work, but to teach others.
Maybe teach the others who were like me: broken in places and trying to fight it—trying to learn who they were around the dark
and pain. And I would go home at the end of every day exhausted but content—fulfilled.
Happy.
I’d go home every day to the town house, to my friends, chock full of stories of their own days, and we’d sit around that table and eat together.
And Rhysand …
Rhysand …
He would be there. He’d give me the money to open my own shop; and because I wouldn’t charge anyone, I’d sell my paintings to pay him back. Because I would pay him back, mate or no.
And he’d be here during the summer, flying over the meadow, chasing me across the little streams and up the sloped, grassy mountainside. He would sit with me under the stars, feeding me fat summer berries. And he would be at that table in the town house, roaring with laughter—never again cold and cruel and solemn. Never again anyone’s slave or whore.
And at night … At night we’d go upstairs together, and he would whisper stories of his adventures, and I’d whisper about my day, and …
And there it was.
A future.
The future I saw for myself, bright as the sunrise over the Sidra.
A direction, and a goal, and an invitation to see what else immortality might offer me. It did not seem so listless, so empty, anymore.
And I would fight until my last breath to attain it—to defend it.
So I knew what I had to do.
Five days passed, and I painted every room in the cottage. Mor had winnowed in extra paint before she’d left, along with more food than I could possibly eat.
But after five days, I was sick of my own thoughts for company
—sick of waiting, sick of the thawing, dripping snow.
Thankfully, Mor returned that night, banging on the door, thunderous and impatient.
I’d taken a bath an hour before, scrubbing off paint in places I hadn’t even known it was possible to smear it, and my hair was still drying as I flung open the door to the blast of cool air.
But Mor wasn’t leaning against the threshold.
I stared at Rhys.
He stared at me.
His cheeks were tinged pink with cold, his dark hair ruffled, and he honestly looked freezing as he stood there, wings tucked in tight.
And I knew that one word from me, and he’d go flying off into the crisp night. That if I shut the door, he’d go and not push it.
His nostrils flared, scenting the paint behind me, but he didn’t break his stare. Waiting.
Mate.
My—mate.
This beautiful, strong, selfless male … Who had sacrificed and wrecked himself for his family, his people, and didn’t feel it was enough, that he wasn’t enough for anyone … Azriel thought he didn’t deserve someone like Mor. And I wondered if Rhys … if he somehow felt the same about me. I stepped aside, holding the door open for him.
I could have sworn I felt a pulse of knee-wobbling relief through the bond.
But Rhys took in the painting I’d done, gobbling down the bright colors that now made the cottage come alive, and said, “You painted us.”
“I hope you don’t mind.”
He studied the threshold to the bedroom hallway. “Azriel, Mor, Amren, and Cassian,” he said, marking the eyes I’d painted. “You do know that one of them is going to paint a moustache under the eyes of whoever pisses them off that day.”
I clamped my lips to keep the smile in. “Oh, Mor already promised to do that.”
“And what about my eyes?”
I swallowed. All right, then. No dancing around it.
My heart was pounding so wildly I knew he could hear it. “I was afraid to paint them.”
Rhys faced me fully. “Why?”
No more games, no more banter. “At first, because I was so mad at you for not telling me. Then because I was worried I’d like them too much and find that you … didn’t feel the same. Then because I was scared that if I painted them, I’d start wishing you were here so much that I’d just stare at them all day. And it seemed like a pathetic way to spend my time.”
A twitch of his lips. “Indeed.”
I glanced at the shut door. “You flew here.”
He nodded. “Mor wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone, and there are only so many places that are as secure as this one. Since I didn’t want our Hybern friends tracking me to you, I had to do it the old-fashioned way. It took … a while.”
“You’re—better?”
“Healed completely. Quickly, considering the bloodbane. Thanks to you.”
I avoided his stare, turning for the kitchen. “You must be hungry.
I’ll heat something up.”
Rhys straightened. “You’d—make me food?”
“Heat,” I said. “I can’t cook.”
It didn’t seem to make a difference. But whatever it was, the act of offering him food … I dumped some cold soup into a pan and lit the burner. “I don’t know the rules,” I said, my back to him. “So you need to explain them to me.”
He lingered in the center of the cabin, watching my every move.
He said hoarsely, “It’s an … important moment when a female offers her mate food. It goes back to whatever beasts we were a long, long time ago. But it still matters. The first time matters.
Some mated pairs will make an occasion of it—throwing a party just so the female can formally offer her mate food … That’s usually done amongst the wealthy. But it means that the female …
accepts the bond.”
I stared into the soup. “Tell me the story—tell me everything.”
He understood my offer: tell me while I cooked, and I’d decide at the end whether or not to offer him that food.
A chair scraped against the wood floor as he sat at the table.
For a moment, there was only silence, interrupted by the clack of my spoon against the pot.
Then Rhys said, “I was captured during the War. By Amarantha’s army.”
I paused my stirring, my gut twisting.
“Cassian and Azriel were in different legions, so they had no idea that my forces and I had been taken prisoner. And that Amarantha’s captains held us for weeks, torturing and slaughtering my warriors. They put ash bolts through my wings, and they had those same chains from the other night to keep me down. Those chains are one of Hybern’s greatest assets—stone delved from deep in their land, capable of nullifying a High Fae’s powers. Even mine. So they chained me up between two trees, beating me when they felt like it, trying to get me to tell them where the Night Court forces were, using my warriors—their deaths and pain—to break me.
“Only I didn’t break,” he said roughly, “and they were too dumb to know that I was an Illyrian, and all they had to do to get me to yield would have been to try to cut off my wings. And maybe it was luck, but they never did. And Amarantha … She didn’t care that I was there. I was yet another High Lord’s son, and Jurian had just slaughtered her sister. All she cared about was getting to him—
killing him. She had no idea that every second, every breath, I plotted her death. I was willing to make it my last stand: to kill her at any cost, even if it meant shredding my wings to break free. I’d watched the guards and learned her schedule, so I knew where she’d be. I set a day, and a time. And I was ready—I was so damned ready to make an end of it, and wait for Cassian and Azriel and Mor on the other side. There was nothing but my rage, and my relief that my friends weren’t there. But the day before I was to kill Amarantha, to make my final stand and meet my end, she and Jurian faced each other on the battlefield.”
He paused, swallowing.
“I was chained in the mud, forced to watch as they battled. To watch as Jurian took my killing blow. Only—she slaughtered him. I watched her rip out his eye, then rip off his finger, and when he was prone, I watched her drag him back to the camp. Then I listened to her slowly, over days and days, tear him apart. His screaming was endless. She was so focused on torturing him that she didn’t detect my father’s arrival. In the panic, she killed Jurian rather than see him liberated, and fled. So my father rescued me
—and told his men, told Azriel, to leave the ash spikes in my wings as punishment for getting caught. I was so injured that the healers informed me if I tried to fight before my wings healed, I’d never fly again. So I was forced to return home to recover—while the final battles were waged.
“They made the Treaty, and the wall was built. We’d long ago freed our slaves in the Night Court. We didn’t trust the humans to keep our secrets, not when they bred so quickly and frequently that my forefathers couldn’t hold all their minds at once. But our world was changed nonetheless. We were all changed by the War. Cassian and Azriel came back different; I came back different. We came here—to this cabin. I was still so injured that they carried me here between them. We were here when the messages arrived about the final terms of the Treaty.
“They stayed with me when I roared at the stars that Amarantha, for all she had done, for every crime committed, would go unpunished. That the King of Hybern would go unpunished. Too much killing had occurred on either side for everyone to be brought to justice, they said. Even my father gave me an order to let it go—to build toward a future of co-existence.
But I never forgave what Amarantha had done to my warriors. And I never forgot it, either. Tamlin’s father—he was her friend. And when my father slaughtered him, I was so damn smug that perhaps she’d feel an inkling of what I’d felt when she murdered my soldiers.”
My hands were shaking as I stirred the soup. I’d never known
… never thought …
“When Amarantha returned to these shores centuries later, I still wanted to kill her. The worst part was, she didn’t even know who I was. Didn’t even remember that I was the High Lord’s son that
she’d held captive. To her, I was merely the son of the man who had killed her friend—I was just the High Lord of the Night Court.
The other High Lords were convinced she wanted peace and trade. Only Tamlin mistrusted her. I hated him, but he’d known Amarantha personally—and if he didn’t trust her … I knew she hadn’t changed.
“So I planned to kill her. I told no one. Not even Amren. I’d let Amarantha think I was interested in trade, in alliance. I decided I’d go to the party thrown Under the Mountain for all the courts to celebrate our trade agreement with Hybern … And when she was drunk, I’d slip into her mind, make her reveal every lie and crime she’d committed, and then I’d turn her brain to liquid before anyone could react. I was prepared to go to war for it.”
I turned, leaning against the counter. Rhys was looking at his hands, as if the story were a book he could read between them.
“But she thought faster—acted faster. She had been trained against my particular skill set, and had extensive mental shields. I was so busy working to tunnel through them that I didn’t think about the drink in my hand. I hadn’t wanted Cassian or Azriel or anyone else there that night to witness what I was to do—so no one bothered to sniff my drink.
“And as I felt my powers being ripped away by that spell she’d put on it at the toast, I flung them out one last time, wiping Velaris, the wards, all that was good, from the minds of the Court of Nightmares—the only ones I’d allowed to come with me. I threw the shield around Velaris, binding it to my friends so that they had to remain or risk that protection collapsing, and used the last dregs to tell them mind to mind what was happening, and to stay away. Within a few seconds, my power belonged wholly to Amarantha.”
His eyes lifted to mine. Haunted, bleak.
“She slaughtered half the Court of Nightmares right then and there. To prove to me that she could. As vengeance for Tamlin’s father. And I knew … I knew in that moment there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her from looking at my court again. From looking too long at who I was and what I loved. So I told myself that it was a new war, a different sort of battle. And that night, when she kept turning her attention to me, I knew what she
wanted. I knew it wasn’t about fucking me so much as it was about getting revenge at my father’s ghost. But if that was what she wanted, then that was what she would get. I made her beg, and scream, and used my lingering powers to make it so good for her that she wanted more. Craved more.”
I gripped the counter to keep from sliding to the ground.
“Then she cursed Tamlin. And my other great enemy became the one loophole that might free us all. Every night that I spent with Amarantha, I knew that she was half wondering if I’d try to kill her. I couldn’t use my powers to harm her, and she had shielded herself against physical attacks. But for fifty years—whenever I was inside her, I’d think about killing her. She had no idea. None.
Because I was so good at my job that she thought I enjoyed it, too. So she began to trust me—more than the others. Especially when I proved what I could do to her enemies. But I was glad to do it. I hated myself, but I was glad to do it. After a decade, I stopped expecting to see my friends or my people again. I forgot what their faces looked like. And I stopped hoping.”
Silver gleamed in his eyes, and he blinked it away. “Three years ago,” he said quietly, “I began to have these … dreams. At first, they were glimpses, as if I were staring through someone else’s eyes. A crackling hearth in a dark home. A bale of hay in a barn. A warren of rabbits. The images were foggy, like looking through cloudy glass. They were brief—a flash here and there, every few months. I thought nothing of them, until one of the images was of a hand … This beautiful, human hand. Holding a brush. Painting
—flowers on a table.”
My heart stopped beating.
“And that time, I pushed a thought back. Of the night sky—of the image that brought me joy when I needed it most. Open night sky, stars, and the moon. I didn’t know if it was received, but I tried, anyway.”
I wasn’t sure I was breathing.
“Those dreams—the flashes of that person, that woman … I treasured them. They were a reminder that there was some peace out there in the world, some light. That there was a place, and a person, who had enough safety to paint flowers on a table. They went on for years, until … a year ago. I was sleeping next to
Amarantha, and I jolted awake from this dream … this dream that was clearer and brighter, like that fog had been wiped away. She
—you were dreaming. I was in your dream, watching as you had a nightmare about some woman slitting your throat, while you were chased by the Bogge … I couldn’t reach you, speak to you. But you were seeing our kind. And I realized that the fog had probably been the wall, and that you … you were now in Prythian.
“I saw you through your dreams—and I hoarded the images, sorting through them over and over again, trying to place where you were, who you were. But you had such horrible nightmares, and the creatures belonged to all courts. I’d wake up with your scent in my nose, and it would haunt me all day, every step. But then one night, you dreamed of standing amongst green hills, seeing unlit bonfires for Calanmai.”
There was such silence in my head.
“I knew there was only one celebration that large; I knew those hills—and I knew you’d probably be there. So I told Amarantha …
” Rhys swallowed. “I told her that I wanted to go to the Spring Court for the celebration, to spy on Tamlin and see if anyone showed up wishing to conspire with him. We were so close to the deadline for the curse that she was paranoid—restless. She told me to bring back traitors. I promised her I would.”
His eyes lifted to mine again.
“I got there, and I could smell you. So I tracked that scent, and
… And there you were. Human—utterly human, and being dragged away by those piece-of-shit picts, who wanted to … ” He shook his head. “I debated slaughtering them then and there, but then they shoved you, and I just … moved. I started speaking without knowing what I was saying, only that you were there, and I was touching you, and … ” He loosed a shuddering breath.
There you are. I’ve been looking for you.
His first words to me—not a lie at all, not a threat to keep those faeries away.
Thank you for finding her for me.
I had the vague feeling of the world slipping out from under my feet like sand washing away from the shore.
“You looked at me,” Rhys said, “and I knew you had no idea who I was. That I might have seen your dreams, but you hadn’t
seen mine. And you were just … human. You were so young, and breakable, and had no interest in me whatsoever, and I knew that if I stayed too long, someone would see and report back, and she’d find you. So I started walking away, thinking you’d be glad to get rid of me. But then you called after me, like you couldn’t let go of me just yet, whether you knew it or not. And I knew … I knew we were on dangerous ground, somehow. I knew that I could never speak to you, or see you, or think of you again.
“I didn’t want to know why you were in Prythian; I didn’t even want to know your name. Because seeing you in my dreams had been one thing, but in person … Right then, deep down, I think I knew what you were. And I didn’t let myself admit it, because if there was the slightest chance that you were my mate … They would have done such unspeakable things to you, Feyre.
“So I let you walk away. I told myself after you were gone that maybe … maybe the Cauldron had been kind, and not cruel, for letting me see you. Just once. A gift for what I was enduring. And when you were gone, I found those three picts. I broke into their minds, reshaping their lives, their histories, and dragged them before Amarantha. I made them confess to conspiring to find other rebels that night. I made them lie and claim that they hated her. I watched her carve them up while they were still alive, protesting their innocence. I enjoyed it—because I knew what they had wanted to do to you. And knew that it would have paled in comparison to what Amarantha would have done if she’d found you.”
I wrapped a hand around my throat. I had my reasons to be out then, he’d once said to me Under the Mountain. Do not think, Feyre, that it did not cost me.
Rhys kept staring at the table as he said, “I didn’t know. That you were with Tamlin. That you were staying at the Spring Court.
Amarantha sent me that day after the Summer Solstice because I’d been so successful on Calanmai. I was prepared to mock him, maybe pick a fight. But then I got into that room, and the scent was familiar, but hidden … And then I saw the plate, and felt the glamour, and … There you were. Living in my second-most enemy’s house. Dining with him. Reeking of his scent. Looking at him like … Like you loved him.”
The whites of his knuckles showed.
“And I decided that I had to scare Tamlin. I had to scare you, and Lucien, but mostly Tamlin. Because I saw how he looked at you, too. So what I did that day … ” His lips were pale, tight. “I broke into your mind and held it enough that you felt it, that it terrified you, hurt you. I made Tamlin beg—as Amarantha had made me beg, to show him how powerless he was to save you.
And I prayed my performance was enough to get him to send you away. Back to the human realm, away from Amarantha. Because she was going to find you. If you broke that curse, she was going to find you and kill you.
“But I was so selfish—I was so stupidly selfish that I couldn’t walk away without knowing your name. And you were looking at me like I was a monster, so I told myself it didn’t matter, anyway.
But you lied when I asked. I knew you did. I had your mind in my hands, and you had the defiance and foresight to lie to my face.
So I walked away from you again. I vomited my guts up as soon as I left.”
My lips wobbled, and I pressed them together.
“I checked back once. To ensure you were gone. I went with them the day they sacked the manor—to make my performance complete. I told Amarantha the name of that girl, thinking you’d invented it. I had no idea … I had no idea she’d send her cronies to retrieve Clare. But if I admitted my lie … ” He swallowed hard. “I broke into Clare’s head when they brought her Under the Mountain. I took away her pain, and told her to scream when expected to. So they … they did those things to her, and I tried to make it right, but … After a week, I couldn’t let them do it. Hurt her like that anymore. So while they tortured her, I slipped into her mind again and ended it. She didn’t feel any pain. She felt none of what they did to her, even at the end. But … But I still see her. And my men. And the others that I killed for Amarantha.”
Two tears slid down his cheeks, swift and cold.
He didn’t wipe them away as he said, “I thought it was done after that. With Clare’s death, Amarantha believed you were dead.
So you were safe, and far away, and my people were safe, and Tamlin had lost, so … it was done. We were done. But then … I was in the back of the throne room that day the Attor brought you
in. And I have never known such horror, Feyre, as I did when I watched you make that bargain. Irrational, stupid terror—I didn’t know you. I didn’t even know your name. But I thought of those painter’s hands, the flowers I’d seen you create. And how she’d delight in breaking your fingers apart. I had to stand and watch as the Attor and its cronies beat you. I had to watch the disgust and hatred on your face as you looked at me, watched me threaten to shatter Lucien’s mind. And then—then I learned your name.
Hearing you say it … it was like an answer to a question I’d been asking for five hundred years.
“I decided, then and there, that I was going to fight. And I would fight dirty, and kill and torture and manipulate, but I was going to fight. If there was a shot of freeing us from Amarantha, you were it. I thought … I thought the Cauldron had been sending me these dreams to tell me that you would be the one to save us. Save my people.
“So I watched your first trial. Pretending—always pretending to be that person you hated. When you were hurt so badly against the Wyrm … I found my way in with you. A way to defy Amarantha, to spread the seeds of hope to those who knew how to read the message, and a way to keep you alive without seeming too suspicious. And a way to get back at Tamlin … To use him against Amarantha, yes, but … To get back at him for my mother and sister, and for … having you. When we made that bargain, you were so hateful that I knew I’d done my job well.
“So we endured it. I made you dress like that so Amarantha wouldn’t suspect, and made you drink the wine so you would not remember the nightly horrors in that mountain. And that last night, when I found you two in the hall … I was jealous. I was jealous of him, and pissed off that he’d used that one shot of being unnoticed not to get you out, but to be with you, and … Amarantha saw that jealousy. She saw me kissing you to hide the evidence, but she saw why. For the first time, she saw why. So that night, after I left you, I had to … service her. She kept me there longer than usual, trying to squeeze the answers out of me. But I gave her what she wanted to hear: that you were nothing, that you were human garbage, that I’d use and discard you. Afterward … I wanted to see you. One last time. Alone. I thought about telling
you everything—but who I’d become, who you thought I was … I didn’t dare shatter that deception.
“But your final trial came, and … When she started torturing you, something snapped in a way I couldn’t explain, only that seeing you bleeding and screaming undid me. It broke me at last.
And I knew as I picked up that knife to kill her … I knew right then what you were. I knew that you were my mate, and you were in love with another male, and had destroyed yourself to save him, and that … that I didn’t care. If you were going to die, I was going to die with you. I couldn’t stop thinking it over and over as you screamed, as I tried to kill her: you were my mate, my mate, my mate.
“But then she snapped your neck.”
Tears rolled down his face.
“And I felt you die,” he whispered.
Tears were sliding down my own cheeks.
“And this beautiful, wonderful thing that had come into my life, this gift from the Cauldron … It was gone. In my desperation, I clung to that bond. Not the bargain—the bargain was nothing, the bargain was like a cobweb. But I grabbed that bond between us and I tugged, I willed you to hold on, to stay with me, because if we could get free … If we could get free, then all seven of us were there. We could bring you back. And I didn’t care if I had to slice into all of their minds to do it. I’d make them save you.” His hands were shaking. “You’d freed us with your last breath, and my power
—I wrapped my power around the bond. The mating bond. I could feel you flickering there, holding on.”
Home. Home had been at the end of the bond, I’d told the Bone Carver. Not Tamlin, not the Spring Court, but … Rhysand.
“So Amarantha died, and I spoke to the High Lords mind to mind, convincing them to come forward, to offer that spark of power. None of them disagreed. I think they were too stunned to think of saying no. And … I again had to watch as Tamlin held you. Kissed you. I wanted to go home, to Velaris, but I had to stay, to make sure things were set in motion, that you were all right. So I waited as long as I could, then I sent a tug through the bond.
Then you came to find me.
“I almost told you then, but … You were so sad. And tired. And for once, you looked at me like … like I was worth something. So I promised myself that the next time I saw you, I’d free you of the bargain. Because I was selfish, and knew that if I let go right then, he’d lock you up and I’d never get to see you again. When I went to leave you … I think transforming you into Fae made the bond lock into place permanently. I’d known it existed, but it hit me then
—hit me so strong that I panicked. I knew if I stayed a second longer, I’d damn the consequences and take you with me. And you’d hate me forever.
“I landed at the Night Court, right as Mor was waiting for me, and I was so frantic, so … unhinged, that I told her everything. I hadn’t seen her in fifty years, and my first words to her were,
‘She’s my mate.’ And for three months … for three months I tried to convince myself that you were better off without me. I tried to convince myself that everything I’d done had made you hate me.
But I felt you through the bond, through your open mental shields.
I felt your pain, and sadness, and loneliness. I felt you struggling to escape the darkness of Amarantha the same way I was. I heard you were going to marry him, and I told myself you were happy. I should let you be happy, even if it killed me. Even if you were my mate, you’d earned that happiness.
“The day of your wedding, I’d planned to get rip-roaring drunk with Cassian, who had no idea why, but … But then I felt you again. I felt your panic, and despair, and heard you beg someone
—anyone—to save you. I lost it. I winnowed to the wedding, and barely remembered who I was supposed to be, the part I was supposed to play. All I could see was you, in your stupid wedding dress—so thin. So, so thin, and pale. And I wanted to kill him for it, but I had to get you out. Had to call in that bargain, just once, to get you away, to see if you were all right.”
Rhys looked up at me, eyes desolate. “It killed me, Feyre, to send you back. To see you waste away, month by month. It killed me to know he was sharing your bed. Not just because you were my mate, but because I … ” He glanced down, then up at me again. “I knew … I knew I was in love with you that moment I picked up the knife to kill Amarantha.
“When you finally came here … I decided I wouldn’t tell you.
Any of it. I wouldn’t let you out of the bargain, because your hatred was better than facing the two alternatives: that you felt nothing for me, or that you … you might feel something similar, and if I let myself love you, you would be taken from me. The way my family was—the way my friends were. So I didn’t tell you. I watched as you faded away. Until that day … that day he locked you up.
“I would have killed him if he’d been there. But I broke some very, very fundamental rules in taking you away. Amren said if I got you to admit that we were mates, it would keep any trouble from our door, but … I couldn’t force the bond on you. I couldn’t try to seduce you into accepting the bond, either. Even if it gave Tamlin license to wage war on me. You had been through so much already. I didn’t want you to think that everything I did was to win you, just to keep my lands safe. But I couldn’t … I couldn’t stop being around you, and loving you, and wanting you. I still can’t stay away.”
He leaned back, loosing a long breath.
Slowly, I turned around, to where the soup was now boiling, and ladled it into a bowl.
He watched every step I took to the table, the steaming bowl in my hands.
I stopped before him, staring down.
And I said, “You love me?”
Rhys nodded.
And I wondered if love was too weak a word for what he felt, what he’d done for me. For what I felt for him.
I set the bowl down before him. “Then eat.”
I watched him consume every spoonful, his eyes darting between where I stood and the soup.
When he was done, he set down his spoon.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he said at last.
“I was going to tell you what I’d decided the moment I saw you on the threshold.”
Rhys twisted in his seat toward me. “And now?”
Aware of every breath, every movement, I sat in his lap. His hands gently braced my hips as I studied his face. “And now I want you to know, Rhysand, that I love you. I want you to know …
” His lips trembled, and I brushed away the tear that escaped down his cheek. “I want you to know,” I whispered, “that I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belongs to you.
And I am honored— honored to be your mate.”
His arms wrapped around me and he pressed his forehead to my shoulder, his body shaking. I stroked a hand through his silken hair.
“I love you,” I said again. I hadn’t dared say the words in my head. “And I’d endure every second of it over again so I could find you. And if war comes, we’ll face it. Together. I won’t let them take me from you. And I won’t let them take you from me, either.”
Rhys looked up, his face gleaming with tears. He went still as I leaned in, kissing away one tear. Then the other. As he had once kissed away mine.
When my lips were wet and salty with them, I pulled back far enough to see his eyes. “You’re mine,” I breathed.
His body shuddered with what might have been a sob, but his lips found my own.
It was gentle—soft. The kiss he might have given me if we’d been granted time and peace to meet across our two separate worlds. To court each other. I slid my arms around his shoulders, opening my mouth to him, and his tongue slipped in, caressing my own. Mate—my mate.
He hardened against me, and I groaned into his mouth.
The sound snapped whatever leash he’d had on himself, and Rhysand scooped me up in a smooth movement before laying me flat on the table—amongst and on top of all the paints.
He deepened the kiss, and I wrapped my legs around his back, hooking him closer. He tore his lips from my mouth to my neck, where he dragged his teeth and tongue down my skin as his hands slid under my sweater and went up, up, to cup my breasts.
I arched into the touch, and lifted my arms as he peeled away my sweater in one easy motion.
Rhys pulled back to survey me, my body naked from the waist up. Paint soaked into my hair, my arms. But all I could think of was his mouth as it lowered to my breast and sucked, his tongue flicking against my nipple.
I plunged my fingers into his hair, and he braced a hand beside my head—smack atop a palette of paint. He let out a low laugh, and I watched, breathless, as he took that hand and traced a circle around my breast, then lower, until he painted a downward arrow beneath my belly button.
“Lest you forget where this is going to end,” he said.
I snarled at him, a silent order, and he laughed again, his mouth finding my other breast. He ground his hips against me, teasing—
teasing me so horribly that I had to touch him, had to just feel more of him. There was paint all over my hands, my arms, but I didn’t care as I grabbed at his clothes. He shifted enough to let me remove them, weapons and leather thudding to the ground, revealing that beautiful tattooed body, the powerful muscles and wings now peeking above them.
My mate—my mate.
His mouth crashed into mine, his bare skin so warm against my own, and I gripped his face, smearing paint there, too. Smearing it in his hair, until great streaks of blue and red and green ran
through it. His hands found my waist, and I bucked my hips off the table to help him remove my socks, my leggings.
Rhys pulled back again, and I let out a bark of protest—that choked off into a gasp as he gripped my thighs and yanked me to the edge of the table, through paints and brushes and cups of water, hooked my legs over his shoulders to rest on either side of those beautiful wings, and knelt before me.
Knelt on those stars and mountains inked on his knees. He would bow for no one and nothing—
But his mate. His equal.
The first lick of Rhysand’s tongue set me on fire.
I want you splayed out on the table like my own personal feast.
He growled his approval at my moan, my taste, and unleashed himself on me entirely.
A hand pinning my hips to the table, he worked me in great sweeping strokes. And when his tongue slid inside me, I reached up to grip the edge of the table, to grip the edge of the world that I was very near to falling off.
He licked and kissed his way to the apex of my thighs, just as his fingers replaced where his mouth had been, pumping inside me as he sucked, his teeth scraping ever so slightly—
I bowed off the table as my climax shattered through me, splintering my consciousness into a million pieces. He kept licking me, fingers still moving. “Rhys,” I rasped.
Now. I wanted him now.
But he remained kneeling, feasting on me, that hand pinning me to the table.
I went over the edge again. And only when I was trembling, half sobbing, limp with pleasure, did Rhys rise from the floor.
He looked me over, naked, covered in paint, his own face and body smeared with it, and give me a slow, satisfied male smile.
“You’re mine,” he snarled, and hefted me up into his arms.
I wanted the wall—I wanted him to just take me against the wall, but he carried me into the room I’d been using and set me down on the bed with heartbreaking gentleness.
Wholly naked, I watched as he unbuttoned his pants, and the considerable length of him sprang free. My mouth went dry at the
sight of it. I wanted him, wanted every glorious inch of him in me, wanted to claw at him until our souls were forged together.
He didn’t say anything as he came over me, wings tucked in tight. He’d never gone to bed with a female while his wings were out. But I was his mate. He would yield only for me.
And I wanted to touch him.
I leaned up, reaching over his shoulder to caress the powerful curve of his wing.
Rhys shuddered, and I watched his cock twitch.
“Play later,” he ground out.
Indeed.
His mouth found mine, the kiss open and deep, a clash of tongues and teeth. He lay me down on the pillows, and I locked my legs around his back, careful of the wings.
Though I stopped caring as he nudged at my entrance. And paused.
“Play later,” I snarled into his mouth.
Rhys laughed in a way that skittered along my bones, and slid in. And in. And in.
I could hardly breathe, hardly think beyond where our bodies were joined. He stilled inside me, letting me adjust, and I opened my eyes to find him staring down at me. “Say it again,” he murmured.
I knew what he meant.
“You’re mine,” I breathed.
Rhys pulled out slightly and thrust back in slow. So torturously slow.
“You’re mine,” I gasped out.
Again, he pulled out, then thrust in.
“You’re mine.”
Again—faster, deeper this time.
I felt it then, the bond between us, like an unbreakable chain, like an undimmable ray of light.
With each pounding stroke, the bond glowed clearer and brighter and stronger. “You’re mine,” I whispered, dragging my hands through his hair, down his back, across his wings.
My friend through many dangers.
My lover who had healed my broken and weary soul.
My mate who had waited for me against all hope, despite all odds.
I moved my hips in time with his. He kissed me over and over, and both of our faces turned damp. Every inch of me burned and tightened, and my control slipped entirely as he whispered, “I love you.”
Release tore through my body, and he pounded into me, hard and fast, drawing out my pleasure until I felt and saw and smelled that bond between us, until our scents merged, and I was his and he was mine, and we were the beginning and middle and end. We were a song that had been sung from the very first ember of light in the world.
Rhys roared as he came, slamming in to the hilt. Outside, the mountains trembled, the remaining snow rushing from them in a cascade of glittering white, only to be swallowed up by the waiting night below.
Silence fell, interrupted only by our panting breaths.
I took his paint-smeared face between my own colorful hands and made him look at me.
His eyes were radiant like the stars I’d painted once, long ago.
And I smiled at Rhys as I let that mating bond shine clear and luminous between us.
I don’t know how long we lay there, lazily touching each other, as if we might indeed have all the time in the world.
“I think I fell in love with you,” Rhys murmured, stroking a finger down my arm, “the moment I realized you were cleaving those bones to make a trap for the Middengard Wyrm. Or maybe the moment you flipped me off for mocking you. It reminded me so much of Cassian. For the first time in decades, I wanted to laugh.”
“You fell in love with me,” I said flatly, “because I reminded you of your friend?”
He flicked my nose. “I fell in love with you, smartass, because you were one of us—because you weren’t afraid of me, and you decided to end your spectacular victory by throwing that piece of bone at Amarantha like a javelin. I felt Cassian’s spirit beside me
in that moment, and could have sworn I heard him say, ‘ If you don’t marry her, you stupid prick, I will.’ ”
I huffed a laugh, sliding my paint-covered hand over his tattooed chest. Paint—right.
We were both covered in it. So was the bed.
Rhys followed my eyes and gave me a grin that was positively wicked. “How convenient that the bathtub is large enough for two.”
My blood heated, and I rose from the bed only to have him move faster—scooping me up in his arms. He was splattered with paint, his hair crusted with it, and his poor, beautiful wings …
Those were my handprints on them. Naked, he carried me into the bath, where the water was already running, the magic of this cabin acting on our behalf.
He strode down the steps into the water, his hiss of pleasure a brush of air against my ear. And I might have moaned a little myself when the hot water hit me as he sat us both down in the tub.
A basket of soaps and oils appeared along the stone rim, and I pushed off him to sink further beneath the surface. The steam wafted between us, and Rhys picked up a bar of that pine tar–
smelling soap and handed it to me, then passed a washrag.
“Someone, it seems, got my wings dirty.”
My face heated, but my gut tightened. Illyrian males and their wings—so sensitive.
I twirled my finger to motion him to turn around. He obeyed, spreading those magnificent wings enough for me to find the paint stains. Carefully, so carefully, I soaped up the washcloth and began wiping the red and blue and purple away.
The candlelight danced over his countless, faint scars—nearly invisible save for harder bits of membrane. He shuddered with each pass, hands braced on the lip of the tub. I peeked over his shoulder to see the evidence of that sensitivity, and said, “At least the rumors about wingspan correlating with the size of other parts were right.”
His back muscles tensed as he choked out a laugh. “Such a dirty, wicked mouth.”
I thought of all the places I wanted to put that mouth and blushed a bit.
“I think I was falling in love with you for a while,” I said, the words barely audible over the trickle of water as I washed his beautiful wings. “But I knew on Starfall. Or came close to knowing and was so scared of it that I didn’t want to look closer. I was a coward.”
“You had perfectly good reasons to avoid it.”
“No, I didn’t. Maybe—thanks to Tamlin, yes. But it had nothing to do with you, Rhys. Nothing to do with you. I was never afraid of the consequences of being with you. Even if every assassin in the world hunts us … It’s worth it. You are worth it.”
His head dipped a bit. And he said hoarsely, “Thank you.”
My heart broke for him then—for the years he’d spent thinking the opposite. I kissed his bare neck, and he reached back to drag a finger down my cheek.
I finished the wings and gripped his shoulder to turn him to face me. “What now?” Wordlessly, he took the soap from my hands and turned me, rubbing down my back, scrubbing lightly with the cloth.
“It’s up to you,” Rhys said. “We can go back to Velaris and have the bond verified by a priestess—no one like Ianthe, I promise—
and be declared officially Mated. We could have a small party to celebrate—dinner with our … cohorts. Unless you’d rather have a large party, though I think you and I are in agreement about our aversion for them.” His strong hands kneaded muscles that were tight and aching in my back, and I groaned. “We could also go before a priestess and be declared husband and wife as well as mates, if you want a more human thing to call me.”
“What will you call me?”
“Mate,” he said. “Though also calling you my wife sounds mighty appealing, too.” His thumbs massaged the column of my spine. “Or if you want to wait, we can do none of those things.
We’re mated, whether it’s shouted across the world or not. There’s no rush to decide.”
I turned. “I was asking about Jurian, the king, the queens, and the Cauldron, but I’m glad to know I have so many options where our relationship stands. And that you’ll do whatever I want. I must have you wrapped completely around my finger.”
His eyes danced with feline amusement. “Cruel, beautiful thing.”
I snorted. The idea that he found me beautiful at all—
“You are,” he said. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I thought that from the first moment I saw you on Calanmai.”
And it was stupid, stupid for beauty to mean anything at all, but
… My eyes burned.
“Which is good,” he added, “because you thought I was the most beautiful male you’d ever seen. So it makes us even.”
I scowled, and he laughed, hands sliding to grip my waist and tug me to him. He sat down on the built-in bench of the tub, and I straddled him, idly stroking his muscled arms.
“Tomorrow,” Rhys said, features becoming grave. “We’re leaving tomorrow for your family’s estate. The queens sent word.
They return in three days.”
I started. “You’re telling me this now?”
“I got sidetracked,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
And the light in those eyes, the quiet joy … They knocked the breath from me. A future—we would have a future together. I would have a future. A life.
His smile faded into something awed, something … reverent, and I reached out to cup his face in my hands—
To find my skin glowing.
Faintly, as if some inner light shone beneath my skin, leaking out into the world. Warm and white light, like the sun—like a star.
Those wonder-filled eyes met mine, and Rhys ran a finger down my arm. “Well, at least now I can gloat that I literally make my mate glow with happiness.”
I laughed, and the glow flared a little brighter. He leaned in, kissing me softly, and I melted for him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He was rock-hard against me, pushing against where I sat poised right above him. All it would take would be one smooth motion and he’d be inside me—
But Rhys stood from the water, both of us dripping wet, and I hooked my legs around him as he walked us back into the bedroom. The sheets had been changed by the domestic magic of the house, and they were warm and smooth against my naked body as he set me down and stared at me. Shining—I was shining bright and pure as a star. “Day Court?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” he said roughly, and removed the glamour from himself.
It was a small magic, he’d once told me, to keep the damper on who he was, what his power looked like.
As the full majesty of him was unleashed, he filled the room, the world, my soul, with glittering ebony power. Stars and wind and shadows; peace and dreams and the honed edge of nightmares.
Darkness rippled from him like tendrils of steam as he reached out a hand and laid it flat against the glowing skin of my stomach.
That hand of night splayed, the light leaking through the wafting shadows, and I hoisted myself up on my elbows to kiss him.
Smoke and mist and dew.
I moaned at the taste of him, and he opened his mouth for me, letting me brush my tongue against his, scrape it against his teeth.
Everything he was had been laid before me—one final question.
I wanted it all.
I gripped his shoulders, guiding him onto the bed. And when he lay flat on his back, I saw the flash of protest at the pinned wings.
But I crooned, “Illyrian baby,” and ran my hands down his muscled abdomen—farther. He stopped objecting.
He was enormous in my hand—so hard, yet so silken that I just ran a finger down him in wonder. He hissed, cock twitching as I brushed my thumb over the tip. I smirked as I did it again.
He reached for me, but I froze him with a look. “My turn,” I told him.
Rhys gave me a lazy, male smile before he settled back, tucking a hand behind his head. Waiting.
Cocky bastard.
So I leaned down and put my mouth on him.
He jerked at the contact with a barked, “Shit,” and I laughed around him, even as I took him deeper into my mouth.
His hands were now fisted in the sheets, white-knuckled as I slid my tongue over him, grazing slightly with my teeth. His groan was fire to my blood.
Honestly, I was surprised he waited the full minute before interrupting me.
Pouncing was a better word for what Rhys did.
One second, he was in my mouth, my tongue flicking over the broad head of him; the next, his hands were on my waist and I was being flipped onto my front. He nudged my legs apart with his knees, spreading me as he gripped my hips, tugging them up, up before he sheathed himself deep in me with a single stroke.
I moaned into the pillow at every glorious inch of him, rising onto my forearms as my fingers grappled into the sheets.
Rhys pulled out and plunged back in, eternity exploding around me in that instant, and I thought I might break apart from not being able to get enough of him.
“Look at you,” he murmured as he moved in me, and kissed the length of my spine.
I managed to rise up enough to see where we were joined—to see the sunlight shimmer off me against the rippling night of him, merging and blending, enriching. And the sight of it wrecked me so thoroughly that I climaxed with his name on my lips.
Rhys hauled me up against him, one hand cupping my breast as the other rolled and stroked that bundle of nerves between my legs, and I couldn’t tell where one climax ended and the second began as he thrust in again, and again, his lips on my neck, on my ear.
I could die from this, I decided. From wanting him, from the pleasure of being with him.
He twisted us, pulling out only long enough to lie on his back and haul me over him.
There was a glimmer in the darkness—a flash of lingering pain, a scar. And I understood why he wanted me like this, wanted to end it like this, with me astride him.
It broke my heart. I leaned forward to kiss him, softly, tenderly.
As our mouths met, I slid onto him, the fit so much deeper, and he murmured my name into my mouth. I kissed him again and again, and rode him gently. Later—there would be other times to go hard and fast. But right now … I wouldn’t think of why this position was one he wanted to end in, to have me banish the stained dark with the light.
But I would glow—for him, I’d glow. For my own future, I’d glow.
So I sat up, hands braced on his broad chest, and unleashed that light in me, letting it drive out the darkness of what had been
done to him, my mate, my friend.
Rhys barked my name, thrusting his hips up. Stars wheeled as he slammed deep.
I think the light pouring out of me might have been starlight, or maybe my own vision fractured as release barreled into me again and Rhys found his, gasping my name over and over as he spilled himself in me.
When we were done, I remained atop him, fingertips digging into his chest, and marveled at him. At us.
He tugged on my wet hair. “We’ll have to find a way to put a damper on that light.”
“I can keep the shadows hidden easily enough.”
“Ah, but you only lose control of those when you’re pissed. And since I have every intention of making you as happy as a person can be … I have a feeling we’ll need to learn to control that wondrous glow.”
“Always thinking; always calculating.”
Rhys kissed the corner of my mouth. “You have no idea how many things I’ve thought up when it comes to you.”
“I remember mention of a wall.”
His laugh was a sensual promise. “Next time, Feyre, I’ll fuck you against the wall.”
“Hard enough to make the pictures fall off.”
Rhys barked a laugh. “Show me again what you can do with that wicked mouth.”
I obliged him.
It was wrong to compare, because I knew probably every High Lord could keep a woman from sleeping all night, but Rhysand was … ravenous. I got perhaps an hour total of sleep that night, though I supposed I was to equally share the blame.
I couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough of the taste of him in my mouth, the feel of him inside of me. More, more, more—until I thought I might burst out of my skin from pleasure.
“It’s normal,” Rhys said around a mouthful of bread as we sat at the table for breakfast. We’d barely made it into the kitchen. He’d taken one step out of bed, giving me a full view of his glorious
wings, muscled back, and that beautiful backside, and I’d leaped on him. We’d tumbled to the floor and he’d shredded the pretty little area rug beneath his talons as I rode him.
“What’s normal?” I said. I could barely look at him without wanting to combust.
“The … frenzy,” he said carefully, as if fearful the wrong word might send us both hurtling for each other before we could get sustenance into our bodies. “When a couple accepts the mating bond, it’s … overwhelming. Again, harkening back to the beasts we once were. Probably something about ensuring the female was impregnated.” My heart paused at that. “Some couples don’t leave the house for a week. Males get so volatile that it can be dangerous for them to be in public, anyway. I’ve seen males of reason and education shatter a room because another male looked too long in their mate’s direction, too soon after they’d been mated.”
I hissed out a breath. Another shattered room flashed in my memory.
Rhys said softly, knowing what haunted me, “I’d like to believe I have more restraint than the average male, but … Be patient with me, Feyre, if I’m a little on edge.”
That he’d admit that much … “You don’t want to leave this house.”
“I want to stay in that bedroom and fuck you until we’re both hoarse.”
That fast, I was ready for him, aching for him, but—but we had to go. Queens. Cauldron. Jurian. War. “About—pregnancy,” I said.
And might as well have thrown a bucket of ice over both of us.
“We didn’t—I’m not taking a tonic. I haven’t been, I mean.”
He set down his bread. “Do you want to start taking it again?”
If I did, if I started today, it’d negate what we’d done last night, but … “If I am a High Lord’s mate, I’m expected to bear you offspring, aren’t I? So perhaps I shouldn’t.”
“You are not expected to bear me anything,” he snarled.
“Children are rare, yes. So rare, and so precious. But I don’t want you to have them unless you want to—unless we both want to.
And right now, with this war coming, with Hybern … I’ll admit that I’m terrified at the thought of my mate being pregnant with so
many enemies around us. I’m terrified of what I might do if you’re pregnant and threatened. Or harmed.”
Something tight in my chest eased, even as a chill went down my back as I considered that power, that rage I’d seen at the Night Court, unleashed upon the earth. “Then I’ll start taking it today, once we get back.”
I rose from the table on shaky knees and headed for the bedroom. I had to bathe—I was covered in him, my mouth tasted of him, despite breakfast. Rhys said softly from behind me, “I would be happy beyond reason, though, if you one day did honor me with children. To share that with you.”
I turned back to him. “I want to live first,” I said. “With you. I want to see things and have adventures. I want to learn what it is to be immortal, to be your mate, to be part of your family. I want to be … ready for them. And I selfishly want to have you all to myself for a while.”
His smile was gentle, sweet. “You take all the time you need.
And if I get you all to myself for the rest of eternity, then I won’t mind that at all.”
I made it to the edge of the bath before Rhys caught me, carried me into the water, and made love to me, slow and deep, amid the billowing steam.
Rhys winnowed us to the Illyrian camp. We wouldn’t be staying long enough to be at risk—and with ten thousand Illyrian warriors surrounding us on the various peaks, Rhys doubted anyone would be stupid enough to attack.
We’d just appeared in the mud outside the little house when Cassian drawled from behind us, “Well, it’s about time.”
The savage, wild snarl that ripped out of Rhys was like nothing I’d heard, and I gripped his arm as he whirled on Cassian.
Cassian looked at him and laughed.
But the Illyrian warriors in the camp began shooting into the sky, hauling women and children with them.
“Hard ride?” Cassian tied back his dark hair with a worn strap of leather.
Preternatural quiet now leaked from Rhys where the snarl had erupted a moment before. And rather than see him turn the camp to rubble I said, “When he bashes your teeth in, Cassian, don’t come crying to me.”
Cassian crossed his arms. “Mating bond chafing a bit, Rhys?”
Rhys said nothing.
Cassian snickered. “Feyre doesn’t look too tired. Maybe she could give me a ride—”
Rhys exploded.
Wings and muscles and snapping teeth, and they were rolling through the mud, fists flying, and—
And Cassian had known exactly what he was saying and doing, I realized as he kicked Rhys off him, as Rhys didn’t touch that power that could have flattened these mountains.
He’d seen the edge in Rhys’s eyes and known he had to dull it before we could go any further.
Rhys had known, too. Which was why we’d winnowed here first
—and not Velaris.
They were a sight to behold, two Illyrian males fighting in the mud and stones, panting and spitting blood. None of the other Illyrians dared land.
Nor would they, I realized, until Rhys had worked off his temper
—or left the camp entirely. If the average male needed a week to adjust … What was required of Rhysand? A month? Two? A year?
Cassian laughed as Rhys slammed a fist into his face, blood spraying. Cassian slung one right back at him, and I cringed as Rhys’s head knocked to the side. I’d seen Rhys fight before, controlled and elegant, and I’d seen him mad, but never so …
feral.
“They’ll be at it for a while,” Mor said, leaning against the threshold of the house. She held open the door. “Welcome to the family, Feyre.”
And I thought those might have been the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.
Rhys and Cassian spent an hour pummeling each other into exhaustion, and when they trudged back into the house, bloody and filthy, one look at my mate was all it took for me to crave the smell and feel of him.
Cassian and Mor instantly found somewhere else to be, and Rhys didn’t bother taking my clothes all the way off before he bent me over the kitchen table and made me moan his name loud enough for the Illyrians still circling high above to hear.
But when we finished, the tightness in his shoulders and the tension coiled in his eyes had vanished … And a knock on the door from Cassian had Rhys handing me a damp washcloth to clean myself. A moment later, the four of us had winnowed to the music and light of Velaris.
To home.
The sun had barely set as Rhys and I walked hand in hand into the dining room of the House of Wind, and found Mor, Azriel, Amren, and Cassian already seated. Waiting for us.
As one, they stood.
As one, they looked at me.
And as one, they bowed.
It was Amren who said, “We will serve and protect.”
They each placed a hand over their heart.
Waiting—for my reply.
Rhys hadn’t warned me, and I wondered if the words were supposed to come from my heart, spoken without agenda or guile.
So I voiced them.
“Thank you,” I said, willing my voice to be steady. “But I’d rather you were my friends before the serving and protecting.”
Mor said with a wink, “We are. But we will serve and protect.”
My face warmed, and I smiled at them. My—family.
“Now that we’ve settled that,” Rhys drawled from behind me,
“can we please eat? I’m famished.” Amren opened her mouth with a wry smile, but he added, “Do not say what you were going to say, Amren.” Rhys gave Cassian a sharp look. Both of them were still bruised—but healing fast. “Unless you want to have it out on the roof.”
Amren clicked her tongue and instead jerked her chin at me. “I heard you grew fangs in the forest and killed some Hybern beasts.
Good for you, girl.”
“She saved his sorry ass is more like it,” Mor said, filling her glass of wine. “Poor little Rhys got himself in a bind.”
I held out my own glass for Mor to fill. “He does need unusual amounts of coddling.”
Azriel choked on his wine, and I met his gaze—warm for once.
Soft, even. I felt Rhys tense beside me and quickly looked away from the spymaster.
A glance at the guilt in Rhys’s eyes told me he was sorry. And fighting it. So strange, the High Fae with their mating and primal instincts. So at odds with their ancient traditions and learning.
We left for the mortal lands soon after dinner. Mor carried the orb; Cassian carried her, Azriel flying close, and Rhys … Rhys
held me tightly, his arms strong and unyielding around me. We were silent as we soared over the dark water.
As we went to show the queens the secret they’d all suffered so much, for so long, to keep.
Spring had at last dawned on the human world, crocuses and daffodils poking their heads out of the thawed earth.
Only the eldest and the golden-haired queens came this time.
They were escorted by just as many guards, however.
I once again wore my flowing, ivory gown and crown of gold feathers, once again beside Rhysand as the queens and their sentries winnowed into the sitting room.
But now Rhys and I stood hand in hand—unflinching, a song without end or beginning.
The eldest queen slid her cunning eyes over us, our hands, our crowns, and merely sat without our bidding, adjusting the skirts of her emerald gown around her. The golden queen remained standing for a moment longer, her shining, curly head angling slightly. Her red lips twitched upward as she claimed the seat beside her companion.
Rhys did not so much as lower his head to them as he said,
“We appreciate you taking the time to see us again.”
The younger queen merely gave a little nod, her amber gaze leaping over to our friends behind us: Cassian and Azriel on either side of the bay of windows where Elain and Nesta stood in their finery, Elain’s garden in bloom behind them. Nesta’s shoulders were already locked. Elain bit her lip.
Mor stood on Rhys’s other side, this time in blue-green that reminded me of the Sidra’s calm waters, the onyx box containing the Veritas in her tan hands.
The ancient queen, surveying us all with narrowed eyes, let out a huff. “After being so gravely insulted the last time … ” A simmering glare thrown at Nesta. My sister leveled a look of pure,
unyielding flame right back at her. The old woman clicked her tongue. “We debated for many days whether we should return. As you can see, three of us found the insult to be unforgivable.”
Liar. To blame it on Nesta, to try to sow discord between us for what Nesta had tried to defend … I said with surprising calm, “If that is the worst insult any of you have ever received in your lives, I’d say you’re all in for quite a shock when war comes.”
The younger one’s lips twitched again, amber eyes alight—a lion incarnate. She purred to me, “So he won your heart after all, Cursebreaker.”
I held her stare as Rhys and I both sat in our chairs, Mor sliding into one beside him. “I do not think,” I said, “that it was mere coincidence that the Cauldron let us find each other on the eve of war returning between our two peoples.”
“The Cauldron? And two peoples?” The golden one toyed with a ruby ring on her finger. “Our people do not invoke a Cauldron; our people do not have magic. The way I see it, there is your people—
and ours. You are little better than those Children of the Blessed.”
She lifted a groomed brow. “What does happen to them when they cross the wall?” She angled her head at Rhys, at Cassian and Azriel. “Are they prey? Or are they used and discarded, and left to grow old and infirm while you remain young forever? Such a pity
… so unfair that you, Cursebreaker, received what all those fools no doubt begged for. Immortality, eternal youth … What would Lord Rhysand have done if you had aged while he did not?”
Rhys said evenly, “Is there a point to your questions, other than to hear yourself talk?”
A low chuckle, and she turned to the ancient queen, her yellow dress rustling with the movement. The old woman simply extended a wrinkled hand to the box in Mor’s slender fingers. “Is that the proof we asked for?”
Don’t do it, my heart began bleating. Don’t show them.
Before Mor could so much as nod, I said, “Is my love for the High Lord not proof enough of our good intentions? Does my sisters’ presence here not speak to you? There is an iron engagement ring upon my sister’s finger—and yet she stands with us.”
Elain seemed to be fighting the urge to tuck her hand behind the skirts of her pale pink and blue dress, but stayed tall while the queens surveyed her.
“I would say that it is proof of her idiocy,” the golden one sneered, “to be engaged to a Fae-hating man … and to risk the match by associating with you.”
“Do not,” Nesta hissed with quiet venom, “judge what you know nothing about.”
The golden one folded her hands in her lap. “The viper speaks again.” She raised her brows at me. “Surely the wise move would have been to have her sit this meeting out.”
“She offers up her house and risks her social standing for us to have these meetings,” I said. “She has the right to hear what is spoken in them. To stand as a representative of the people of these lands. They both do.”
The crone interrupted the younger before she could reply, and again waved that wrinkled hand at Mor. “Show us, then. Prove us wrong.”
Rhys gave Mor a subtle nod. No—no, it wasn’t right. Not to show them, not to reveal the treasure that was Velaris, that was my home …
War is sacrifice, Rhys said into my mind, through the small sliver I now kept open for him. If we do not gamble Velaris, we risk losing Prythian—and more.
Mor opened the lid of the black box.
The silver orb inside glimmered like a star under glass. “This is the Veritas,” Mor said in a voice that was young and old. “The gift of my first ancestor to our bloodline. Only a few times in the history of Prythian have we used it—have we unleashed its truth upon the world.”
She lifted the orb from its velvet nest. It was no larger than a ripe apple, and fit within her cupped palms as if her entire body, her entire being, had been molded for it.
“Truth is deadly. Truth is freedom. Truth can break and mend and bind. The Veritas holds in it the truth of the world. I am the Morrigan,” she said, her eyes not wholly of this earth. The hair on my arms rose. “You know I speak truth.”
She set the Veritas onto the carpet between us. Both queens leaned in.
But it was Rhys who said, “You desire proof of our goodness, our intentions, so that you may trust the Book in our hands?” The Veritas began pulsing, a web of light spreading with each throb.
“There is a place within my lands. A city of peace. And art. And prosperity. As I doubt you or your guards will dare pass through the wall, then I will show it to you—show you the truth of these words, show you this place within the orb itself.”
Mor stretched out a hand, and a pale cloud swirled from the orb, merging with its light as it drifted past our ankles.
The queens flinched, the guards edging forward with hands on their weapons. But the clouds continued roiling as the truth of it, of Velaris, leaked from the orb, from whatever it dragged up from Mor, from Rhys. From the truth of the world.
And in the gray gloom, a picture appeared.
It was Velaris, as seen from above—as seen by Rhys, flying in.
A speck in the coast, but as he dropped down, the city and the river became clearer, vibrant.
Then the image banked and swerved, as if Rhys had flown through his city just this morning. It shot past boats and piers, past the homes and streets and theaters. Past the Rainbow of Velaris, so colorful and lovely in the new spring sun. People, happy and thoughtful, kind and welcoming, waved to him. Moment after moment, images of the Palaces, of the restaurants, of the House of Wind. All of it—all of that secret, wondrous city. My home.
And I could have sworn that there was love in that image. I could not explain how the Veritas conveyed it, but the colors … I understood the colors, and the light, what they conveyed, what the orb somehow picked up from whatever link it had to Rhys’s memories.
The illusion faded, color and light and cloud sucked back into the orb.
“That is Velaris,” Rhys said. “For five thousand years, we have kept it a secret from outsiders. And now you know. That is what I protect with the rumors, the whispers, the fear. Why I fought for your people in the War—only to begin my own supposed reign of terror once I ascended my throne, and ensured everyone heard
the legends about it. But if the cost of protecting my city and people is the contempt of the world, then so be it.”
The two queens were gaping at the carpet as if they could still see the city there. Mor cleared her throat. The golden one, as if Mor had barked, started and dropped an ornate lace handkerchief on the ground. She leaned to pick it up, cheeks a bit red.
But the crone raised her eyes to us. “Your trust is …
appreciated.”
We waited.
Both of their faces turned grave, unmoved. And I was glad I was sitting as the eldest added at last, “We will consider.”
“There is no time to consider,” Mor countered. “Every day lost is another day that Hybern gets closer to shattering the wall.”
“We will discuss amongst our companions, and inform you at our leisure.”
“Do you not understand the risks you take in doing so?” Rhys said, no hint of condescension. Only—only perhaps shock. “You need this alliance as much as we do.”
The ancient queen shrugged her frail shoulders. “Did you think we would be moved by your letter, your plea?” She jerked her chin to the guard closest, and he reached into his armor to pull out a folded letter. The old woman read, “I write to you not as a High Lord, but as a male in love with a woman who was once human. I write to you to beg you to act quickly. To save her people—to help save my own. I write to you so one day we might know true peace. So I might one day be able to live in a world where the woman I love may visit her family without fear of hatred and reprisal. A better world.” She set down the letter.
Rhys had written that letter weeks ago … before we’d mated.
Not a demand for the queens to meet—but a love letter. I reached across the space between us and took his hand, squeezing gently. Rhys’s fingers tightened around my own.
But then the ancient one said, “Who is to say that this is not all some grand manipulation?”
“What?” Mor blurted.
The golden queen nodded her agreement and dared say to Mor, “A great many things have changed since the War. Since your so-called friendships with our ancestors. Perhaps you are not
who you say you are. Perhaps the High Lord has crept into our minds to make us believe you are the Morrigan.”
Rhys was silent—we all were. Until Nesta said too softly, ‘This is the talk of madwomen. Of arrogant, stupid fools.”
Elain grabbed for Nesta’s hand to silence her. But Nesta stalked forward a step, face white with rage. “Give them the Book.”
The queens blinked, stiffening.
My sister snapped, “Give them the Book.”
And the eldest queen hissed, “No.”
The word clanged through me.
But Nesta went on, flinging out an arm to encompass us, the room, the world, “There are innocent people here. In these lands.
If you will not risk your necks against the forces that threaten us, then grant those people a fighting chance. Give my sister the Book.”
The crone sighed sharply through her nose. “An evacuation may be possible—”
“You would need ten thousand ships,” Nesta said, her voice breaking. “You would need an armada. I have calculated the numbers. And if you are readying for war, you will not send your ships to us. We are stranded here.”
The crone gripped the polished arms of her chair as she leaned forward a bit. “Then I suggest asking one of your winged males to carry you across the sea, girl.”
Nesta’s throat bobbed. “Please.” I didn’t think I’d ever heard that word from her mouth. “Please—do not leave us to face this alone.”
The eldest queen remained unmoved. I had no words in my head.
We had shown them … we had … we had done everything.
Even Rhys was silent, his face unreadable.
But then Cassian crossed to Nesta, the guards stiffening as the Illyrian moved through them as if they were stalks of wheat in a field.
He studied Nesta for a long moment. She was still glaring at the queens, her eyes lined with tears— tears of rage and despair, from that fire that burned her so violently from within. When she finally noticed Cassian, she looked up at him.
His voice was rough as he said, “Five hundred years ago, I fought on battlefields not far from this house. I fought beside human and faerie alike, bled beside them. I will stand on that battlefield again, Nesta Archeron, to protect this house—your people. I can think of no better way to end my existence than to defend those who need it most.”
I watched a tear slide down Nesta’s cheek. And I watched as Cassian reached up a hand to wipe it away.
She did not flinch from his touch.
I didn’t know why, but I looked at Mor.
Her eyes were wide. Not with jealousy, or irritation, but …
something perhaps like awe.
Nesta swallowed and at last turned away from Cassian. He stared at my sister a moment longer before facing the queens.
Without signal, the two women rose.
Mor demanded, on her feet as well, “Is it a sum you’re after?
Name your price, then.”
The golden queen snorted as their guards closed in around them. “We have all the riches we need. We will now return to our palace to deliberate with our sisters.”
“You’re already going to say no,” Mor pushed.
The golden queen smirked. “Perhaps.” She took the crone’s withered hand.
The ancient queen lifted her chin. “We appreciate the gesture of your trust.”
Then they were gone.
Mor swore. And I looked at Rhys, my own heart breaking, about to demand why he hadn’t pushed, why he hadn’t said more—
But his eyes were on the chair where the golden queen had been seated.
Beneath it, somehow hidden by her voluminous skirts while she’d sat, was a box.
A box … that she must have removed from wherever she was hiding it when she’d leaned down to pick up her handkerchief.
Rhys had known it. Had stopped speaking to get them out as fast as possible.
How and where she’d smuggled in that lead box was the least of my concerns.
Not as the voice of the second and final piece of the Book filled the room, sang to me.
Life and death and rebirth
Sun and moon and dark
Rot and bloom and bones
Hello, sweet thing. Hello, lady of night, princess of decay. Hello, fanged beast and trembling fawn. Love me, touch me, sing me.
Madness. Where the first half had been cold cunning, this box