By the Cauldron. I must have made some tiny noise, because Mor gave me a strained, but sympathetic look.
Rhys, though … First the shadows started—plumes of them from his back.
And then, as if his rage had loosened his grip on that beast he’d once told me he hated to yield to, those wings became flesh.
Great, beautiful, brutal wings, membranous and clawed like a bat’s, dark as night and strong as hell. Even the way he stood seemed altered—steadier, grounded. Like some final piece of him had clicked into place. But Rhysand’s voice was still midnight-soft and he said, “What did Azriel have to say about it?”
Again, that glance from Mor, as if unsure I should be present for whatever this conversation was. “He’s pissed. Cassian even more so—he’s convinced it must be one of the rogue Illyrian war-bands, intent on winning new territory.”
“It’s something to consider,” Rhys mused. “Some of the Illyrian clans gleefully bowed to Amarantha during those years. Trying to expand their borders could be their way of seeing how far they can push me and get away with it.” I hated the sound of her name, focused on it more than the information he was allowing me to glean.
“Cassian and Az are waiting—” She cut herself off and gave me an apologetic wince. “They’re waiting in the usual spot for your orders.”
Fine—that was fine. I’d seen that blank map on the wall. I was an enemy’s bride. Even mentioning where his forces were stationed, what they were up to, might be dangerous. I had no idea where Cesere even was—what it was, actually.
Rhys studied the open air again, the howling wind that shoved dark, roiling clouds over the distant peaks. Good weather, I realized, for flying.
“Winnowing in would be easier,” Mor said, following the High Lord’s gaze.
“Tell the pricks I’ll be there in a few hours,” he merely said.
Mor gave me a wary grin, and vanished.
I studied the empty space where she’d been, not a trace of her left behind.
“How does that … vanishing work?” I said softly. I’d seen only a few High Fae do it—and no one had ever explained.
Rhys didn’t look at me, but he said, “Winnowing? Think of it as
… two different points on a piece of cloth. One point is your current place in the world. The other one across the cloth is where you want to go. Winnowing … it’s like folding that cloth so the two spots align. The magic does the folding—and all we do is take a step to get from one place to another. Sometimes it’s a long step, and you can feel the dark fabric of the world as you pass through it. A shorter step, let’s say from one end of the room to the other, would barely register. It’s a rare gift, and a helpful one. Though only the stronger Fae can do it. The more powerful you are, the farther you can jump between places in one go.”
I knew the explanation was as much for my benefit as it was to distract himself. But I found myself saying, “I’m sorry about the temple—and the priestesses.”
The wrath still glimmered in those eyes as he at last turned to me. “Plenty more people are going to die soon enough, anyway.”
Maybe that was why he’d allowed me to get close, to overhear this conversation. To remind me of what might very well happen with Hybern.
“What are … ,” I tried. “What are Illyrian war-bands?”
“Arrogant bastards, that’s what,” he muttered.
I crossed my arms, waiting.
Rhys stretched his wings, the sunlight setting the leathery texture glowing with subtle color. “They’re a warrior-race within my lands. And general pains in my ass.”
“Some of them supported Amarantha?”
Darkness danced in the hall as that distant storm grew close enough to smother the sun. “Some. But me and mine have enjoyed ourselves hunting them down these past few months. And ending them.”
Slowly was the word he didn’t need to add.
“That’s why you stayed away—you were busy with that?”
“I was busy with many things.”
Not an answer. But it seemed he was done talking to me, and whoever Cassian and Azriel were, meeting with them was far more important.
So Rhys didn’t as much as say good-bye before he simply walked off the edge of the veranda—into thin air.
My heart stopped dead, but before I could cry out, he swept past, swift as the wicked wind between the peaks. A few booming wing beats had him vanishing into the storm clouds.
“Good-bye to you, too,” I grumbled, giving him a vulgar gesture, and started my work for the day, with only the storm raging beyond the house’s shield for company.
Even as snow lashed the protective magic of the hall, even as I toiled over the sentences— Rhysand is interesting; Rhysand is gorgeous; Rhysand is flawless—and raised and lowered my mental shield until my mind was limping, I thought of what I’d heard, what they’d said.
I wondered what Ianthe would know about the murders, if she knew any of the victims. Knew what Cesere was. If temples were being targeted, she should know. Tamlin should know.
That final night, I could barely sleep—half from relief, half from terror that perhaps Rhysand really did have some final, nasty surprise in store. But the night and the storm passed, and when dawn broke, I was dressed before the sun had fully risen.
I’d taken to eating in my rooms, but I swept up the stairs, heading across that massive open area, to the table at the far veranda.
Sprawled in his usual chair, Rhys was in the same clothes as yesterday, the collar of his black jacket unbuttoned, the shirt as rumpled as his hair. No wings, fortunately. I wondered if he’d just returned from wherever he’d met Mor and the others. Wondered what he’d learned.
“It’s been a week,” I said by way of greeting. “Take me home.”
Rhys took a long sip of whatever was in his cup. It didn’t look like tea. “Good morning, Feyre.”
“Take me home.”
He studied my teal and gold clothes, a variation of my daily attire. If I had to admit, I didn’t mind them. “That color suits you.”
“Do you want me to say please? Is that it?”
“I want you to talk to me like a person. Start with ‘good morning’
and let’s see where it gets us.”
“Good morning.”
A faint smile. Bastard. “Are you ready to face the consequences of your departure?”
I straightened. I hadn’t thought about the wedding. All week, yes, but today … today I’d only thought of Tamlin, of wanting to see him, hold him, ask him about everything Rhys had claimed.
During the past several days, I hadn’t shown any signs of the power Rhysand believed I had, hadn’t felt anything stirring beneath my skin—and thank the Cauldron.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Right. You’ll probably ignore it, anyway. Sweep it under the rug, like everything else.”
“No one asked for your opinion, Rhysand.”
“Rhysand?” He chuckled, low and soft. “I give you a week of luxury and you call me Rhysand?”
“I didn’t ask to be here, or be given that week.”
“And yet look at you. Your face has some color—and those marks under your eyes are almost gone. Your mental shield is stellar, by the way.”
“Please take me home.”
He shrugged and rose. “I’ll tell Mor you said good-bye.”
“I barely saw her all week.” Just that first meeting—then that conversation yesterday. When we hadn’t exchanged two words.
“She was waiting for an invitation—she didn’t want to pester you. I wish she extended me the same courtesy.”
“No one told me.” I didn’t particularly care. No doubt she had better things to do, anyway.
“You didn’t ask. And why bother? Better to be miserable and alone.” He approached, each step smooth, graceful. His hair was definitely ruffled, as if he’d been dragging his hands through it. Or just flying for hours to whatever secret spot. “Have you thought about my offer?”
“I’ll let you know next month.”
He stopped a hand’s breadth away, his golden face tight. “I told you once, and I’ll tell you again,” he said. “I am not your enemy.”
“And I told you once, so I’ll tell you again. You’re Tamlin’ s enemy. So I suppose that makes you mine.”
“Does it?”
“Free me from my bargain and let’s find out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
He just extended his hand. “Shall we go?”
I nearly lunged for it. His fingers were cool, sturdy—callused from weapons I’d never seen on him.
Darkness gobbled us up, and it was instinct to grab him as the world vanished from beneath my feet. Winnowing indeed. Wind tore at me, and his arm was a warm, heavy weight across my back while we tumbled through realms, Rhys snickering at my terror.
But then solid ground—flagstones—were under me, then blinding sunshine above, greenery, little birds chirping—
I shoved away from him, blinking at the brightness, at the massive oak hunched over us. An oak at the edge of the formal gardens—of home.
I made to bolt for the manor house, but Rhys gripped my wrist.
His eyes flashed between me and the manor. “Good luck,” he crooned.
“Get your hand off me.”
He chuckled, letting go.
“I’ll see you next month,” he said, and before I could spit on him, he vanished.
I found Tamlin in his study, Lucien and two other sentries standing around the map-covered worktable.
Lucien was the first to turn to where I lurked in the doorway, falling silent mid-sentence. But then Tamlin’s head snapped up, and he was racing across the room, so fast that I hardly had time to draw breath before he was crushing me against him.
I murmured his name as my throat burned, and then—
Then he was holding me at arm’s length, scanning me from head to toe. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I said, noticing the exact moment when he realized the Night Court clothes I was wearing, the strip of bare skin exposed at my midriff. “No one touched me.”
But he kept scouring my face, my neck. And then he rotated me, examining my back, as if he could discern through the clothes. I tore out of his grip. “I said no one touched me.”
He was breathing hard, his eyes wild. “You’re all right,” he said.
And then said it again. And again.
My heart cracked, and I reached to cup his cheek. “Tamlin,” I murmured. Lucien and the other sentries, wisely, made their exit.
My friend caught my gaze as he left, giving me a relieved smile.
“He can harm you in other ways,” Tamlin croaked, closing his eyes against my touch.
“I know—but I’m all right. I truly am,” I said as gently as I could.
And then noticed the study walls—the claw marks raked down them. All over them. And the table they’d been using … that was new. “You trashed the study.”
“I trashed half the house,” he said, leaning forward to press his brow to mine. “He took you away, he stole you—”
“And left me alone.”
Tamlin pulled back, growling. “Probably to get you to drop your guard. You have no idea what games he plays, what he’s capable of doing—”
“I know,” I said, even as it tasted like ash on my tongue. “And the next time, I’ll be careful—”
“There won’t be a next time.”
I blinked. “You found a way out?” Or perhaps Ianthe had.
“I’m not letting you go.”
“He said there were consequences for breaking a magical bargain.”
“Damn the consequences.” But I heard it for the empty threat it was—and how much it destroyed him. That was who he was, what he was: protector, defender. I couldn’t ask him to stop being that way—to stop worrying about me.
I rose onto my toes and kissed him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, but—later. “Let’s go upstairs,” I said onto his lips, and he slid his arms around me.
“I missed you,” he said between kisses. “I went out of my mind.”
That was all I needed to hear. Until—
“I need to ask you some questions.”
I let out a low sound of affirmation, but angled my head further.
“Later.” His body was so warm, so hard against mine, his scent so familiar—
Tamlin gripped my waist, pressing his brow to my own. “No—
now,” he said, but groaned softly as I slid my tongue against his teeth. “While … ” He pulled back, ripping his mouth from mine.
“While it’s all fresh in your mind.”
I froze, one hand tangled in his hair, the other gripping the back of his tunic. “What?”
Tamlin stepped back, shaking his head as if to clear the desire addling his senses. We hadn’t been apart for so long since Amarantha, and he wanted to press me for information about the Night Court? “Tamlin.”
But he held up a hand, his eyes locked on mine as he called for Lucien.
In the moments that it took for his emissary to appear, I straightened my clothes—the top that had ridden up my torso—
and finger-combed my hair. Tamlin just strode to his desk and
plopped down, motioning for me to take a seat in front of it. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, as Lucien’s strolling footsteps neared again.
“This is for our own good. Our safety.”
I took in the shredded walls, the scuffed and chipped furniture.
What nightmares had he suffered, waking and asleep, while I was away? What had it been like, to imagine me in his enemy’s hands, after seeing what Amarantha had done to me?
“I know,” I murmured at last. “I know, Tamlin.” Or I was trying to know.
I’d just slid into the low-backed chair when Lucien strode in, shutting the door behind him. “Glad to see you in one piece, Feyre,” he said, claiming the seat beside me. “I could do without the Night Court attire, though.”
Tamlin gave a low growl of agreement. I said nothing. Yet I understood—I really did—why it’d be an affront to them.
Tamlin and Lucien exchanged glances, speaking without uttering a word in that way only people who had been partners for centuries could do. Lucien gave a slight nod and leaned back in his chair—to listen, to observe.
“We need you to tell us everything,” Tamlin said. “The layout of the Night Court, who you saw, what weapons and powers they bore, what Rhys did, who he spoke to, any and every detail you can recall.”
“I didn’t realize I was a spy.”
Lucien shifted in his seat, but Tamlin said, “As much as I hate your bargain, you’ve been granted access into the Night Court.
Outsiders rarely get to go in—and if they do, they rarely come out in one piece. And if they can function, their memories are usually
… scrambled. Whatever Rhysand is hiding in there, he doesn’t want us knowing about it.”
A chill slithered down my spine. “Why do you want to know?
What are you going to do?”
“Knowing my enemy’s plans, his lifestyle, is vital. As for what we’re going to do … That’s neither here nor there.” His green eyes pinned me. “Start with the layout of the court. Is it true it’s under a mountain?”
“This feels an awful lot like an interrogation.”
Lucien sucked in a breath, but remained silent.
Tamlin spread his hands on the desk. “We need to know these things, Feyre. Or—or can you not remember?” Claws glinted at his knuckles.
“I can remember everything,” I said. “He didn’t damage my mind.” And before he could question me further, I began to speak of all that I had seen.
Because I trust you, Rhysand had said. And maybe—maybe he had scrambled my mind, even with the lessons in shielding, because describing the layout of his home, his court, the mountains around them, felt like bathing in oil and mud. He was my enemy, he was holding me to a bargain I’d made from pure desperation—
I kept talking, describing that tower room. Tamlin grilled me on the figures on the maps, making me turn over every word Rhysand had uttered, until I mentioned what had weighed on me the most this past week: the powers Rhys believed I now possessed … and Hybern’s plans. I told him about that conversation with Mor—about that temple being sacked (Cesere, Tamlin explained, was a northern outpost in the Night Court, and one of the few known towns), and Rhysand mentioning two people named Cassian and Azriel. Both of their faces had tightened at that, but they didn’t mention if they knew them, or of them. So I told him about whatever the Illyrians were—and how Rhys had hunted down and killed the traitors amongst them.
When I finished, Tamlin was silent, Lucien practically buzzing with whatever repressed words he was dying to spew.
“Do you think I might have those abilities?” I said, willing myself to hold his gaze.
“It’s possible,” Tamlin said with equal quiet. “And if it’s true … ”
Lucien said at last, “It’s a power other High Lords might kill for.”
It was an effort not to fidget while his metal eye whirred, as if detecting whatever power ran through my blood. “My father, for one, would not be pleased to learn a drop of his power is missing
—or that Tamlin’s bride now has it. He’d do anything to make sure you don’t possess it—including kill you. There are other High Lords who would agree.”
That thing beneath my skin began roiling. “I’d never use it against anyone—”
“It’s not about using it against them; it’s about having an edge when you shouldn’t,” Tamlin said. “And the moment word gets out about it, you will have a target on your back.”
“Did you know?” I demanded. Lucien wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Did you suspect?”
“I’d hoped it wasn’t true,” Tamlin said carefully. “And now that Rhys suspects, there’s no telling what he’ll do with the information
—”
“He wants me to train.” I wasn’t stupid enough to mention the mental shield training—not right now.
“Training would draw too much attention,” Tamlin said. “You don’t need to train. I can guard you from whatever comes our way.”
For there had been a time when he could not. When he had been vulnerable, and when he had watched me be tortured to death. And could do nothing to stop Amarantha from—
I would not allow another Amarantha. I would not allow the King of Hybern to bring his beasts and minions here to hurt more people. To hurt me and mine. And bring down that wall to hurt countless others across it. “I could use my powers against Hybern.”
“That’s out of the question,” Tamlin said, “especially as there will be no war against Hybern.”
“Rhys says war is inevitable, and we’ll be hit hard.”
Lucien said drily, “And Rhys knows everything?”
“No—but … He was concerned. He thinks I can make a difference in any upcoming conflict.”
Tamlin flexed his fingers—keeping those claws contained. “You have no training in battle or weaponry. And even if I started training you today, it’d be years before you could hold your own on an immortal battlefield.” He took a tight breath. “So despite what he thinks you might be able to do, Feyre, I’m not going to have you anywhere near a battlefield. Especially if it means revealing whatever powers you have to our enemies. You’d be fighting Hybern at your front, and have foes with friendly faces at your back.”
“I don’t care—”
“I care,” Tamlin snarled. Lucien whooshed out a breath. “I care if you die, if you’re hurt, if you will be in danger every moment for the rest of our lives. So there will be no training, and we’re going to keep this between us.”
“But Hybern—”
Lucien intervened calmly, “I already have my sources looking into it.”
I gave him a beseeching look.
Lucien sighed a bit and said to Tamlin, “If we perhaps trained her in secret—”
“Too many risks, too many variables,” Tamlin countered. “And there will be no conflict with Hybern, no war.”
I snapped, “That’s wishful thinking.”
Lucien muttered something that sounded like a plea to the Cauldron.
Tamlin stiffened. “Describe his map room for me again,” was his only response.
End of discussion. No room for debate.
We stared each other down for a moment, and my stomach twisted further.
He was the High Lord— my High Lord. He was the shield and defender of his people. Of me. And if keeping me safe meant that his people could continue to hope, to build a new life, that he could do the same … I could bow to him on this one thing.
I could do it.
You are no one’s subject.
Maybe Rhysand had altered my mind, shields or no.
The thought alone was enough for me to begin feeding Tamlin details once more.
A week later, the Tithe arrived.
I’d had all of one day with Tamlin—one day spent wandering the grounds, making love in the high grasses of a sunny field, and a quiet, private dinner—before he was called to the border. He didn’t tell me why or where. Only that I was to keep to the grounds, and that I’d have sentries guarding me at all times.
So I spent the week alone, waking in the middle of the night to hurl up my guts, to sob through the nightmares. Ianthe, if she’d learned of her sisters’ massacre in the north, said nothing about it the few times I saw her. And given how little I liked to be pushed into talking about the things that plagued me, I opted not to bring it up during the hours she spent visiting, helping select my clothes, my hair, my jewelry, for the Tithe.
When I’d asked her to explain what to anticipate, she merely said that Tamlin would take care of everything. I should watch from his side, and observe.
Easy enough—and perhaps a relief, to not be expected to speak or act.
But it had been an effort not to look at the eye tattooed into my palm—to remember what Rhys had snarled at me.
Tamlin had only returned the night before to oversee today’s Tithe. I tried not to take it personally, not when he had so much on his shoulders. Even if he wouldn’t tell me much about it beyond what Ianthe had mentioned.
Seated beside Tamlin atop a dais in the manor’s great hall of marble and gold, I endured the endless stream of eyes, of tears, of gratitude and blessings for what I’d done.
In her usual pale blue hooded robe, Ianthe was stationed near the doors, offering benedictions to those that departed, comforting words to those who fell apart entirely in my presence, promises that the world was better now, that good had won out over evil.
After twenty minutes, I was near fidgeting. After four hours, I stopped hearing entirely.
They kept coming, the emissaries representing every town and people in the Spring Court, bearing their payments in the form of gold or jewels or chickens or crops or clothes. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it equated to what they owed. Lucien stood at the foot of the dais, tallying every amount, armed to the teeth like the ten other sentries stationed through the hall. The receiving room, Lucien had called it, but it felt a hell of a lot like a throne room to me. I wondered if he’d called it that because the other words …
I’d spent too much time in another throne room. So had Tamlin.
And I hadn’t been seated on a dais like him, but kneeling before it. Approaching it like the slender, gray-skinned faerie slinking from the front of the endless line full of lesser and High Fae.
She wore no clothes. Her long, dark hair hung limp over her high, firm breasts—and her massive eyes were wholly black. Like a stagnant pond. And as she moved, the afternoon light shimmered on her iridescent skin.
Lucien’s face tightened with disapproval, but he made no comment as the lesser faerie lowered her delicate, pointed face, and clasped her spindly, webbed fingers over her breasts.
“On behalf of the water-wraiths, I greet thee, High Lord,” she said, her voice strange and hissing, her full, sensuous lips revealing teeth as sharp and jagged as a pike’s. The sharp angles of her face accentuated those coal-black eyes.
I’d seen her kind before. In the pond just past the edge of the manor. There were five of them who lived amongst the reeds and lilypads. I’d rarely glimpsed more than their shining heads peeking through the glassy surface—had never known how horrific they were up close. Thank the Cauldron I’d never gone swimming in that pond. I had a feeling she’d grab me with those webbed fingers—those jagged nails digging in deep—and drag me beneath the surface before I could scream.
“Welcome,” Tamlin said. Five hours in, and he looked as fresh as he’d been that morning.
I supposed that with his powers returned, few things tired him now.
The water-wraith stepped closer, her webbed, clawed foot a mottled gray. Lucien took a casual step between us.
That was why he’d been stationed on my side of the dais.
I gritted my teeth. Who did they think would attack us in our own home, on our own land, if they weren’t convinced Hybern might be launching an assault? Even Ianthe had paused her quiet murmurings in the back of the hall to monitor the encounter.
Apparently, this conversation was not the same as all the others.
“Please, High Lord,” the faerie was saying, bowing so low that her inky hair grazed the marble. “There are no fish left in the lake.”
Tamlin’s face was like granite. “Regardless, you are expected to pay.” The crown atop his head gleamed in the afternoon light.
Crafted with emeralds, sapphires, and amethyst, the gold had been molded into a wreath of spring’s first flowers. One of five crowns belonging to his bloodline.
The faerie exposed her palms, but Tamlin interrupted her.
“There are no exceptions. You have three days to present what is owed—or offer double next Tithe.”
It was an effort to keep from gaping at the immovable face, and the pitiless words. In the back, Ianthe gave a nod of confirmation to no one in particular.
The water-wraith had nothing to eat—how could he expect her to give him food?
“Please,” she whispered through her pointed teeth, her silvery, mottled skin glistening as she began trembling. “There is nothing left in the lake.”
Tamlin’s face didn’t change. “You have three days—”
“But we have no gold!”
“Do not interrupt me,” he said. I looked away, unable to stomach that merciless face.
She ducked her head even lower. “Apologies, my lord.”
“You have three days to pay, or bring double next month,” he repeated. “If you fail to do so, you know the consequences.”
Tamlin waved a hand in dismissal. Conversation over.
After a final, hopeless look at Tamlin, she walked from the chamber. As the next faerie—a goat-legged fawn bearing what looked to be a basket of mushrooms—patiently waited to be invited to approach the dais, I twisted to Tamlin.
“We don’t need a basket of fish,” I murmured. “Why make her suffer like that?”
He flicked his eyes to where Ianthe had stepped aside to let the creature pass, a hand on the jewels of her belt. As if the female would snatch them right off her to use as payment. Tamlin frowned. “I cannot make exceptions. Once you do, everyone will demand the same treatment.”
I clutched the arms of my chair, a small seat of oak beside his giant throne of carved roses. “But we don’t need these things.
Why do we need a golden fleece, or a jar of jam? If she has no fish left, three days won’t make a difference. Why make her starve? Why not help her replenish the pond?” I’d spent enough years with an aching belly to not be able to drop it, to want to scream at the unfairness of it.
His emerald eyes softened as if he read each thought on my face, but he said: “Because that’s the way it is. That’s the way my father did it, and his father, and the way my son shall do it.” He offered a smile, and reached for my hand. “Someday.”
Someday. If we ever got married. If I ever became less of a burden, and we both escaped the shadows haunting us. We hadn’t broached the subject at all. Ianthe, mercifully, had not said anything, either. “We could still help her—find some way to keep that pond stocked.”
“We have enough to deal with as it is. Giving handouts won’t help her in the long run.”
I opened my mouth, but shut it. Now wasn’t the time for debate.
So I pulled my hand from his as he motioned the goat-legged fawn to approach at last. “I need some fresh air,” I said, and slid from my chair. I didn’t give Tamlin a chance to object before I stalked off the dais. I tried not to notice the three sentries Tamlin sent after me, or the line of emissaries who gaped and whispered as I crossed the hall.
Ianthe tried to catch me as I stormed by, but I ignored her.
I cleared the front doors and walked as fast as I dared past the gathered line snaking down the steps and onto the gravel of the main drive. Through the latticework of various bodies, High Fae and lesser faeries alike, I spotted the retreating form of the wraith heading around the corner of our house—toward the pond beyond the grounds. She trudged along, wiping at her eyes.
“Excuse me,” I called, catching up to her, the sentries on my trail keeping a respectful distance behind.
She paused at the edge of the house, whirling with preternatural smoothness. I avoided the urge to take a step back as those unearthly features devoured me. Keeping only a few paces away, the guards monitored us with hands on their blades.
Her nose was little more than two slits, and delicate gills flared beneath her ears.
She inclined her head slightly. Not a full bow—because I was no one, but recognition that I was the High Lord’s plaything.
“Yes?” she hissed, her pike’s teeth gleaming.
“How much is your Tithe?”
My heart beat faster as I beheld the webbed fingers and razor-sharp teeth. Tamlin had once told me that the water-wraiths ate anything. And if there were no fish left … “How much gold does he want—what is your fish worth in gold?”
“Far more than you have in your pocket.”
“Then here,” I said, unfastening a ruby-studded gold bracelet from my wrist, one Ianthe had told me better suited my coloring than the silver I’d almost worn. I offered it to her. “Take this.”
Before she could grasp it, I ripped the gold necklace from my throat, and the diamond teardrops from my ears. “And these.” I extended my hands, glittering with gold and jewels. “Give him what you owe, then buy yourself some food,” I said, swallowing as her eyes widened. The nearby village had a small market every week—a fledgling gathering of vendors for now, and one I’d hoped to help thrive. Somehow.
“And what payment do you require?”
“Nothing. It’s—it’s not a bargain. Just take it.” I extended my hands further. “Please.”
She frowned at the jewels draping from my hands. “You desire nothing in return?”
“Nothing.” The faeries in the line were now staring unabashedly.
“Please, just take them.”
With a final assessing look, her cold, clammy fingers brushed mine, gathering up the jewelry. It glimmered like light on water in her webbed hands.
“Thank you,” she said, and bowed deeply this time. “I will not forget this kindness.” Her voice slithered over the words, and I shivered again as her black eyes threatened to swallow me whole.
“Nor will any of my sisters.”
She stalked back toward the manor, the faces of my three sentries tight with reproach.
I sat at the dinner table with Lucien and Tamlin. Neither of them spoke, but Lucien’s gaze kept bouncing from me, to Tamlin, then to his plate.
After ten minutes of silence, I set down my fork and said to Tamlin, “What is it?”
Tamlin didn’t hesitate. “You know what it is.”
I didn’t reply.
“You gave that water-wraith your jewelry. Jewelry I gave you.”
“We have a damned house full of gold and jewels.”
Lucien took a deep breath that sounded a lot like: “Here we go.”
“Why shouldn’t I give them to her?” I demanded. “Those things don’t mean anything to me. I’ve never worn the same piece of jewelry twice! Who cares about any of it?”
Tamlin’s lips thinned. “Because you undermine the laws of this court when you behave like that. Because this is how things are done here, and when you hand that gluttonous faerie the money she needs, it makes me—it makes this entire court—look weak.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” I said, baring my teeth. He slammed his hand on the table, claws poking through his flesh, but I leaned forward, bracing my own hands on the wood. “You still have no idea what it was like for me—to be on the verge of starvation for months at a time. And you can call her a glutton all you like, but I have sisters, too, and I remember what it felt like to return home without any food.” I calmed my heaving chest, and that force beneath my skin stirred, undulating along my bones.
“So maybe she’ll spend all that money on stupid things—maybe she and her sisters have no self-control. But I’m not going to take that chance and let them starve, because of some ridiculous rule that your ancestors invented.”
Lucien cleared his throat. “She meant no harm, Tam.”
“I know she meant no harm,” he snapped.
Lucien held his gaze. “Worse things have happened, worse things can happen. Just relax.”
Tamlin’s emerald eyes were feral as he snarled at Lucien, “Did I ask for your opinion?”
Those words, the look he gave Lucien and the way Lucien lowered his head—my temper was a burning river in my veins.
Look up, I silently beseeched him. Push back. He’s wrong, and we’re right. Lucien’s jaw tightened. That force thrummed in me again, seeping out, spearing for Lucien. Do not back down—
Then I was gone.
Still there, still seeing through my eyes, but also half looking through another angle in the room, another person’s vantage point
—
Thoughts slammed into me, images and memories, a pattern of thinking and feeling that was old, and clever, and sad, so endlessly sad and guilt-ridden, hopeless—
Then I was back, blinking, no more than a heartbeat passing as I gaped at Lucien.
His head. I had been inside his head, had slid through his mental walls—
I stood, chucking my napkin on the table with hands that were unnervingly steady.
I knew who that gift had come from. My dinner rose in my throat, but I willed it down.
“We’re not finished with this meal,” Tamlin growled.
“Oh, get over yourself,” I barked, and left.
I could have sworn I beheld two burned handprints on the wood, peeking out from beneath my napkin. I prayed neither of them noticed.
And that Lucien remained ignorant to the violation I’d just committed.
I paced my room for a good while. Maybe I’d been mistaken when I’d spotted those burns—maybe they’d been there before. Maybe I hadn’t somehow summoned heat and branded the wood. Maybe I hadn’t slid into Lucien’s mind as if I were moving from one room to another.
Just as she always did, Alis appeared to help me change for bed. As I sat before the vanity, letting her comb my hair, I cringed at my reflection. The purple beneath my eyes seemed permanent now—my face wan. Even my lips were a bit pale, and I sighed as I closed my eyes.
“You gave your jewels to a water-wraith,” Alis mused, and I found her reflection in the mirror. Her brown skin looked like crushed leather, and her dark eyes gleamed for a moment before she focused on my hair. “They’re a slippery sort.”
“She said they were starving—that they had no food,” I murmured.
Alis gently coaxed out a tangle. “Not one faerie in that line today would have given her the money. Not one would have dared. Too many have gone to a watery grave because of their hunger.
Insatiable appetite—it is their curse. Your jewels won’t last her a week.”
I tapped a foot on the floor.
“But,” Alis went on, setting down the brush to braid my hair into a single plait. Her long, spindly fingers scratched against my scalp. “She will never forget it. So long as she lives, no matter what you said, she is in your debt.” Alis finished the braid and patted my shoulder. “Too many faeries have tasted hunger these past fifty years. Don’t think word of this won’t spread.”
I was afraid of that perhaps more than anything.
It was after midnight when I gave up waiting, walked down the dark, silent corridors, and found him in his study, alone for once.
A wooden box wrapped with a fat pink bow sat on the small table between the twin armchairs. “I was just about to come up,”
he said, lifting his head to do a quick scan over my body to make sure all was right, all was fine. “You should be asleep.”
I shut the door behind me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep—
not with the words we’d shouted ringing in my ears. “So should you,” I said, my voice as tenuous as the peace between us. “You work too hard.” I crossed the room to lean against the armchair, eyeing the present as Tamlin had eyed me.
“Why do you think I had such little interest in being High Lord?”
he said, rising from his seat to round the desk. He kissed my brow, the tip of my nose, my mouth. “So much paperwork,” he grumbled onto my lips. I chuckled, but he pressed his mouth to the bare spot between my neck and shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and my spine tingled. He kissed my neck again. “I’m sorry.”
I ran a hand down his arm. “Tamlin,” I started.
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” he breathed onto my skin.
“To you or Lucien. I didn’t mean any of them.”
“I know,” I said, and his body relaxed against mine. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“You had every right,” he said, though I technically didn’t. “I was wrong.”
What he said had been true—if he made exceptions, then other faeries would demand the same treatment. And what I had done could be construed as undermining. “Maybe I was—”
“No. You were right. I don’t understand what it’s like to be starving—or any of it.”
I pulled back a bit to incline my head toward the present waiting there, more than willing to let this be the last of it. I gave a small, wry smile. “For you?”
He nipped at my ear in answer. “For you. From me.” An apology.
Feeling lighter than I had in days, I tugged the ribbon loose, and examined the pale wood box beneath. It was perhaps two feet high and three feet wide, a solid iron handle anchored in the top—
no crest or lettering to indicate what might be within. Certainly not a dress, but …
Please not a crown.
Though surely, a crown or diadem would be in something less
… rudimentary.
I unlatched the small brass lock and flipped open the broad lid.
It was worse than a crown, actually.
Built into the box were compartments and sleeves and holders, all full of brushes and paints and charcoal and sheets of paper. A traveling painting kit.
Red—the red paint inside the glass vial was so bright, the blue as stunning as the eyes of that faerie woman I’d slaughtered—
“I thought you might want it to take around the grounds with you. Rather than lug all those bags like you always do.”
The brushes were fresh, gleaming—the bristles soft and clean.
Looking at that box, at what was inside, felt like examining a crow-picked corpse.
I tried to smile. Tried to will some brightness to my eyes.
He said, “You don’t like it.”
“No,” I managed to say. “No—it’s wonderful.” And it was. It really was.
“I thought if you started painting again … ” I waited for him to finish.
He didn’t.
My face heated.
“And what about you?” I asked quietly. “Will the paperwork help with anything at all?”
I dared meet his eyes. Temper flared in them. But he said,
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking—about you.”
I studied the box and its contents again. “Will I even be allowed to roam where I wish to paint? Or will there be an escort, too?”
Silence.
A no—and a yes, then.
I began shaking, but for me, for us, I made myself say, “Tamlin
—Tamlin, I can’t … I can’t live my life with guards around me day
and night. I can’t live with that … suffocation. Just let me help you
—let me work with you.”
“You’ve given enough, Feyre.”
“I know. But … ” I faced him. Met his stare—the full power of the High Lord of the Spring Court. “I’m harder to kill now. I’m faster, stronger—”
“My family was faster and stronger than you. And they were murdered quite easily.”
“Then marry someone who can put up with this.”
He blinked. Slowly. Then he said with terrible softness, “Do you not want to marry me, then?”
I tried not to look at the ring on my finger, at that emerald. “Of course I do. Of course I do.” My voice broke. “But you … Tamlin …
” The walls pushed in on me. The quiet, the guards, the stares.
What I’d seen at the Tithe today. “I’m drowning,” I managed to say.
“I am drowning. And the more you do this, the more guards … You might as well be shoving my head under the water.”
Nothing in those eyes, that face.
But then—
I cried out, instinct taking over as his power blasted through the room.
The windows shattered.
The furniture splintered.
And that box of paints and brushes and paper …
It exploded into dust and glass and wood.
One breath, the study was intact.
The next, it was shards of nothing, a shell of a room.
None of it had touched me from where I had dropped to the floor, my hands over my head.
Tamlin was panting, the ragged breaths almost like sobs.
I was shaking—shaking so hard I thought my bones would splinter as the furniture had—but I made myself lower my arms and look at him.
There was devastation on that face. And pain. And fear. And grief.
Around me, no debris had fallen—as if he had shielded me.
Tamlin took a step toward me, over that invisible demarcation.
He recoiled as if he’d hit something solid.
“Feyre,” he rasped.
He stepped again—and that line held.
“Feyre, please,” he breathed.
And I realized that the line, that bubble of protection …
It was from me.
A shield. Not just a mental one—but a physical one, too.
I didn’t know what High Lord it had come from, who controlled air or wind or any of that. Perhaps one of the Solar Courts. I didn’t care.
“Feyre,” Tamlin groaned a third time, pushing a hand against what indeed looked like an invisible, curved wall of hardened air.
“Please. Please.”
Those words cracked something in me. Cracked me open.
Perhaps they cracked that shield of solid wind as well, for his hand shot through it.
Then he stepped over that line between chaos and order, danger and safety.
He dropped to his knees, taking my face in his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t stop trembling.
“I’ll try,” he breathed. “I’ll try to be better. I don’t … I can’t control it sometimes. The rage. Today was just … today was bad. With the Tithe, with all of it. Today—let’s forget it, let’s just move past it.
Please.”
I didn’t fight as he slid his arms around me, tucking me in tightly enough that his warmth soaked through me. He buried his face in my neck and said onto my nape, as if the words would be absorbed by my body, as if he could only say it the way we’d always been good at communicating—skin to skin, “I couldn’t save you before. I couldn’t protect you from them. And when you said that, about … about me drowning you … Am I any better than they were?”
I should have told him it wasn’t true, but … I had spoken with my heart. Or what was left of it.
“I’ll try to be better,” he said again. “Please—give me more time.
Let me … let me get through this. Please.”
Get through what? I wanted to ask. But words had abandoned me. I realized I hadn’t spoken yet.
Realized he was waiting for an answer—and that I didn’t have one.
So I put my arms around him, because body to body was the only way I could speak, too.
It was answer enough. “I’m sorry,” he said again. He didn’t stop murmuring it for minutes.
You’ve given enough, Feyre.
Perhaps he was right. And perhaps I didn’t have anything left to give, anyway.
I looked over his shoulder as I held him.
The red paint had splattered on the wall behind us. And as I watched it slide down the cracked wood paneling, I thought it looked like blood.
Tamlin didn’t stop apologizing for days. He made love to me, morning and night. He worshipped my body with his hands, his tongue, his teeth. But that had never been the hard part. We just got tripped up with the rest.
But he was good for his word.
There were fewer guards as I walked the grounds. Some remained, but no one haunted my steps. I even went on a ride through the wood without an escort.
Though I knew the stable hands had reported to Tamlin the moment I’d left—and returned.
Tamlin never mentioned that shield of solid wind I’d used against him. And things were good enough that I didn’t dare bring it up, either.
The days passed in a blur. Tamlin was away more often than not, and whenever he returned, he didn’t tell me anything. I’d long since stopped pestering him for answers. A protector—that’s who he was, and would always be. What I had wanted when I was cold and hard and joyless; what I had needed to melt the ice of bitter years on the cusp of starvation.
I didn’t have the nerve to wonder what I wanted or needed now.
Who I had become.
So with idleness my only option, I spent my days in the library.
Practicing my reading and writing. Adding to that mental shield, brick by brick, layer by layer. Sometimes seeing if I could summon that physical wall of solid air, too. Savoring the silence, even as it crept into my veins, my head.
Some days, I didn’t speak to anyone at all. Even Alis.
I awoke each night, shaking and panting. And became glad when Tamlin wasn’t there to witness it. When I, too, didn’t witness him being yanked from his dreams, cold sweat coating his body.
Or shifting into that beast and staying awake until dawn, monitoring the estate for threats. What could I say to calm those fears, when I was the source of so many of them?
But he returned for an extended stay about two weeks after the Tithe—and I’d decided to try to talk, to interact. I owed it to him to try. Owed it to myself.
He seemed to have the same idea. And the first time in a while
… things felt normal. Or as normal as they could be.
I awoke one morning to the sound of low, deep voices in the hallway outside my bedroom. Closing my eyes, I nestled into the pillow and pulled the blankets higher. Despite our morning roll in the sheets, I’d been rising later every day—sometimes not bothering to get out of bed until lunch.
A growl cut through the walls, and I opened my eyes again.
“Get out,” Tamlin warned.
There was a quiet response—too soft for me to make out beyond basic mumbling.
“I’ll say it one last time—”
He was interrupted by that voice, and the hair on my arms rose.
I studied the tattoo on my forearm as I did a tally. No—no, today couldn’t have come so quickly.
Kicking back the covers, I rushed to the door, realizing halfway there that I was naked. Thanks to Tamlin, my clothes had been shredded and flung across the other side of the room, and I had no robe in sight. I grabbed a blanket from a nearby chair and wrapped it around me before opening the door a crack.
Sure enough, Tamlin and Rhysand stood in the hallway. Upon hearing the door open, Rhys turned toward me. The grin that had been on his face faltered.
“Feyre.” Rhys’s eyes lingered, taking in every detail. “Are you running low on food here?”
“What?” Tamlin demanded.
Those violet eyes had gone cold. Rhys extended a hand toward me. “Let’s go.”
Tamlin was in Rhysand’s face in an instant, and I flinched. “Get out.” He pointed toward the staircase. “She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”
Rhysand just brushed an invisible fleck of dust off Tamlin’s sleeve. Part of me admired the sheer nerve it must have taken.
Had Tamlin’s teeth been inches from my throat, I would have bleated in panic.
Rhys cut a glance at me. “No, you wouldn’t have. As far as your memory serves me, the last time Tamlin’s teeth were near your
throat, you slapped him across the face.” I snapped up my forgotten shields, scowling.
“Shut your mouth,” Tamlin said, stepping further between us.
“And get out.”
The High Lord conceded a step toward the stairs and slid his hands into his pockets. “You really should have your wards inspected. Cauldron knows what other sort of riffraff might stroll in here as easily as I did.” Again, Rhys assessed me, his gaze hard.
“Put some clothes on.”
I bared my teeth at him as I stepped back into my room. Tamlin followed after me, slamming the door hard enough that the chandeliers shuddered, sending shards of light shivering over the walls.
I dropped the blanket and strode for the armoire across the room, the mattress groaning behind me as Tamlin sank onto the bed. “How did he get in here?” I asked, throwing open the doors and rifling through the clothes until I found the turquoise Night Court attire I’d asked Alis to keep. I knew she’d wanted to burn them, but I told her I’d wind up coming home with another set anyway.
“I don’t know,” Tamlin said. I slipped on my pants, twisting to find him running a hand through his hair. I felt the lie beneath his words. “He just—it’s just part of whatever game he’s playing.”
I tugged the short shirt over my head. “If war is coming, maybe we’d be better served trying to mend things.” We hadn’t spoken of that subject since my first day back. I dug through the bottom of the armoire for the matching silk shoes, and turned to him as I slid them on.
“I’ll start mending things the day he releases you from your bargain.”
“Maybe he’s keeping the bargain so that you’ll attempt to listen to him.” I strode to where he sat on the bed, my pants a bit looser around the waist than last month.
“Feyre,” he said, reaching for me, but I stepped out of range.
“Why do you need to know these things? Is it not enough for you to recover in peace? You earned that for yourself. You earned it. I relaxed the number of sentries here; I’ve been trying … trying to
be better about it. So leave the rest of it—” He took a steadying breath. “This isn’t the time for this conversation.”
It was never the time for this conversation, or that conversation.
But I didn’t say it. I didn’t have the energy to say it, and all the words dried up and blew away. So I memorized the lines of Tamlin’s face, and didn’t fight him as he pulled me to his chest and held me tightly.
Someone coughed from the hall, and Tamlin’s body seized up around me.
But I’d had enough fighting, and snarling, and going back to that open, serene place atop that mountain … It seemed better than hiding in the library.
I pulled away, and Tamlin lingered as I walked back into the hall.
Rhys frowned at me. I debated barking something nasty at him, but it would have required more fire than I had—and would have required caring what he thought.
Rhys’s face became unreadable as he extended a hand.
Only for Tamlin to appear behind me, and shove that hand down. “You end her bargain right here, right now, and I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”
My heart stopped dead. “Are you out of your mind?”
Tamlin didn’t so much as blink in my direction.
Rhysand merely raised a brow. “I already have everything I want.” He stepped around Tamlin as if he were a piece of furniture and took my hand. Before I could say good-bye, a black wind gathered us up, and we were gone.
“What the hell happened to you?” Rhysand said before the Night Court had fully appeared around us.
“Why don’t you just look inside my head?” Even as I said it, the words had no bite. I didn’t bother to shove him as I stepped out of his hold.
He gave me a wink. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I didn’t smile.
“No shoe throwing this time?” I could almost see the other words in his eyes. Come on. Play with me.
I headed for the stairs that would take me to my room.
“Eat breakfast with me,” he said.
There was a note in those words that made me pause. A note of what I could have sworn was desperation. Worry.
I twisted, my loose clothes sliding over my shoulders, my waist.
I hadn’t realized how much weight I’d lost. Despite things creeping back to normal.
I said, “Don’t you have other things to deal with?”
“Of course I do,” he said, shrugging. “I have so many things to deal with that I’m sometimes tempted to unleash my power across the world and wipe the board clean. Just to buy me some damned peace.” He grinned, bowing at the waist. Even that casual mention of his power failed to chill me, awe me. “But I’ll always make time for you.”
I was hungry—I hadn’t yet eaten. And that was indeed worry glimmering behind the cocky, insufferable grin.
So I motioned him to lead the way to that familiar glass table at the end of the hall.
We walked a casual distance apart. Tired. I was so—tired.
When we were almost to the table, Rhys said, “I felt a spike of fear this month through our lovely bond. Anything exciting happen at the wondrous Spring Court?”
“It was nothing,” I said. Because it was. And it was none of his business.
I glanced sidelong at him—and rage, not worry—flickered in those eyes.
I could have sworn the mountain beneath us trembled in response.
“If you know,” I said coldly, “why even ask about it?” I dropped into my chair as he slid into his.
He said quietly, “Because these days, all I hear through that bond is nothing. Silence. Even with your shields up rather impressively most of the time, I should be able to feel you. And yet I don’t. Sometimes I’ll tug on the bond only to make sure you’re still alive.” Darkness guttered. “And then one day, I’m in the middle of an important meeting when terror blasts through the bond. All I get are glimpses of you and him—and then nothing. Back to silence. I’d like to know what caused such a disruption.”
I served myself from the platters of food, barely caring what had been laid on the table. “It was an argument, and the rest is none of your concern.”
“Is it why you look like your grief and guilt and rage are eating you alive, bit by bit?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. “Get out of my head.”
“Make me. Push me out. You dropped your shield this morning
—anyone could have walked right in.”
I held his stare. Another challenge. And I just … I didn’t care. I didn’t care about whatever smoldered in my body, about how I’d slipped into Lucien’s head as easily as Rhys could slip into mine, shield or no shield. “Where’s Mor?” I asked instead.
He tensed, and I braced myself for him to push, to provoke, but he said, “Away. She has duties to attend to.” Shadows swirled around him again and I dug into my food. “Is the wedding on hold, then?”
I paused eating barely long enough to mumble, “Yes.”
“I expected an answer more along the lines of, ‘ Don’t ask stupid questions you already know the answer to,’ or my timeless
favorite, ‘ Go to hell.’ ”
I only reached for a platter of tartlets. His hands were flat on the table—and a whisper of black smoke curled over his fingers. Like talons.
He said, “Did you give my offer any thought?”
I didn’t answer until my plate was empty and I was heaping more food onto it. “I’m not going to work with you.”
I almost felt the dark calm that settled over him. “And why, Feyre, are you refusing me?”
I pushed around the fruit on my plate. “I’m not going to be a part of this war you think is coming. You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn—they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who’s wielding it.”
“I want your help, not to manipulate you,” he snapped.
His flare of temper made me at last lift my head. “You want my help because it’ll piss off Tamlin.”
Shadows danced around his shoulders—as if the wings were trying to take form.
“Fine,” he breathed. “I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help.”
Again, I could feel the other unspoken words: Ask me why; push me about it.
And again, I didn’t want to. Didn’t have the energy to.
Rhys said quietly, “I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years. I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please—help me keep that from happening again.
To Prythian.”
Some distant part of my heart ached and bled at the words, at what he’d laid bare.
But Tamlin had made exceptions—he’d lightened the guards’
presence, allowed me to roam a bit more freely. He was trying.
We were trying. I wouldn’t jeopardize that.
So I went back to eating.
Rhys didn’t say another word.
I didn’t join him for dinner.
I didn’t rise in time for breakfast, either.
But when I emerged at noon, he was waiting upstairs, that faint, amused smile on his face. He nudged me toward the table he’d arranged with books and paper and ink.
“Copy these sentences,” he drawled from across the table, handing me a piece of paper.
I looked at them and read perfectly:
“Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of.” I set down the paper, wrote out the three sentences, and handed it to him.
The claws slammed into my mind a moment later.
And bounced harmlessly off a black, glimmering shield of adamant.
He blinked. “You practiced.”
I rose from the table and walked away. “I had nothing better to do.”
That night, he left a pile of books by my door with a note.
I have business elsewhere. The house is yours. Send word if you need me.
Days passed—and I didn’t.
Rhys returned at the end of the week. I’d taken to situating myself in one of the little lounges overlooking the mountains, and had almost read an entire book in the deep-cushioned armchair, going slowly as I learned new words. But it had filled my time—given me quiet, steadfast company with those characters, who did not exist and never would, but somehow made me feel less … alone.
The woman who’d hurled a bone-spear at Amarantha … I didn’t know where she was anymore. Perhaps she’d vanished that day her neck had snapped and faerie immortality had filled her veins.
I was just finishing up a particularly good chapter—the second-to-last in the book—a shaft of buttery afternoon sunlight warming my feet, when Rhysand slid between two of the oversized
armchairs, twin plates of food in his hands, and set them on the low-lying table before me. “Since you seem hell-bent on a sedentary lifestyle,” he said, “I thought I’d go one step further and bring your food to you.”
My stomach was already twisting with hunger, and I lowered the book into my lap. “Thank you.”
A short laugh. “Thank you? Not ‘ High lord and servant?’ Or:
‘ Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.’?” He clicked his tongue. “How disappointing.”
I set down the book and extended a hand for the plate. He could listen to himself talk all day if he wished, but I wanted to eat.
Now.
My fingers had almost grazed the rim of the plate when it just slid away.
I reached again. Once more, a tendril of his power yanked the plate further back.
“Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do to help you.”
Rhys kept the plate beyond reach. He spoke again, and as if the words tumbling out loosened his grip on his power, talons of smoke curled over his fingers and great wings of shadow spread from his back. “Months and months, and you’re still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?”
He did care. Tamlin did care. Perhaps too much. “He’s giving me space to sort it out,” I said, with enough of a bite that I barely recognized my voice.
“Let me help you,” Rhys said. “We went through enough Under the Mountain—”
I flinched.
“She wins,” Rhys breathed. “That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart.”
I wondered if he’d been telling himself that for months now, wondered if he, too, had moments when his own memories sometimes suffocated him deep in the night.
But I lifted the book, firing two words down the bond between us before I blasted my shields up again.
Conversation over.
“Like hell it is,” he snarled. A thrum of power caressed my fingers, and then the book sealed shut between my hands. My nails dug into the leather and paper—to no avail.
Bastard. Arrogant, presuming bastard.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes to him. And I felt … not hot temper—but icy, glittering rage.
I could almost feel that ice at my fingertips, kissing my palms.
And I swore there was frost coating the book before I hurled it at his head.
He shielded fast enough that it bounced away and slid across the marble floor behind us.
“Good,” he said, his breathing a bit uneven. “What else do you have, Feyre?”
Ice melted to flame, and my fingers curled into fists.
And the High Lord of the Night Court honestly looked relieved at the sight of it—of that wrath that made me want to rage and burn.
A feeling, for once. Not like that hollow cold and silence.
And the thought of returning to that manor with the sentries and the patrols and the secrets … I sank back into my chair. Frozen once more.
“Any time you need someone to play with,” Rhys said, pushing the plate toward me on a star-flecked wind, “whether it’s during our marvelous week together or otherwise, you let me know.”
I couldn’t muster up a response, exhausted from the bit of temper I’d shown.
And I realized I was in a free fall with no end. I had been for a while. From the moment I’d stabbed that Fae youth in the heart.
I didn’t look up at him again as I devoured the food.
The next morning, Tamlin was waiting in the shade of the gnarled, mighty oak tree in the garden.
A murderous expression twisted his face, directed solely at Rhys. Yet there was nothing amused in Rhys’s smile as he stepped back from me—only a cold, cunning predator gazing out.
Tamlin growled at me, “Get inside.”
I looked between the two High Lords. And seeing that fury in Tamlin’s face … I knew there would be no more solitary rides or
Rhys just said to me, “Fight it.”
And then he was gone.
“I’m fine,” I said to Tamlin, as his shoulders slumped, his head bowing.
“I will find a way to end this,” he swore.
I wanted to believe him. I knew he’d do anything to achieve it.
He made me again walk through every detail I had learned at Rhys’s home. Every conversation, however brief. I told him everything, each word quieter than the last.
Protect, protect, protect—I could see the word in his eyes, feel it in every thrust he made into my body that night. I had been taken from him once in the most permanent of ways, but never again.
The sentries returned in full force the next morning.
During that first week back, I wasn’t allowed out of sight of the house.
Some nameless threat had broken onto the lands, and Tamlin and Lucien were called away to deal with it. I asked my friend to tell me what it was, yet … Lucien had that look he always did when he wanted to, but his loyalty to Tamlin got in the way. So I didn’t ask again.
While they were gone, Ianthe returned—to keep me company, protect me, I don’t know.
She was the only one allowed in. The semi-permanent gaggle of Spring Court lords and ladies at the manor had been dismissed, along with their personal servants. I was grateful for it, that I no longer would run into them while walking the halls of the manor, or the gardens, and have to dredge up a memory of their names, personal histories, no longer have to endure them trying not to stare at the tattoo, but … I knew Tamlin had liked having them around. Knew some of them were indeed old friends, knew he liked the manor being full of sound and laughter and chatter. Yet I’d found they all talked to each other like they were sparring partners. Pretty words masking sharp-edged insults.
I was glad for the silence—even as it became a weight on me, even as it filled my head until there was nothing inside of it beyond
… emptiness.
Eternity. Was this to be my eternity?
I was burning through books every day—stories about people and places I’d never heard of. They were perhaps the only thing that kept me from teetering into utter despair.
Tamlin returned eight days later, brushing a kiss over my brow and looking me over, and then headed into the study. Where Ianthe had news for him.
That I was also not to hear.
Alone in the hall, watching as the hooded priestess led him toward the double doors at its other end, a glimmer of red—
My body tensed, instinct roaring through me as I whirled—
Not Amarantha.
Lucien.
The red hair was his, not hers. I was here, not in that dungeon
—
My friend’s eyes—both metal and flesh—were fixed on my hands.
Where my nails were growing, curving. Not into talons of shadow, but claws that had shredded through my undergarments time and again—
Stop stop stop stop stop—
It did.
Like blowing out a candle, the claws vanished into a wisp of shadow.
Lucien’s gaze slid to Tamlin and Ianthe, unaware of what had happened, and then he silently inclined his head, motioning for me to follow.
We took the sweeping stairs to the second level, the halls deserted. I didn’t look at the paintings flanking either side. Didn’t look beyond the towering windows to the bright gardens.
We passed my bedroom door, passed his own—until we entered a small study on the second level, mostly left unused.
He shut the door after I’d entered the room, and leaned against the wood panel.
“How long have the claws been appearing?” he said softly.
“That was the first time.” My voice rang hollow and dull in my ears.
Lucien surveyed me—the vibrant fuchsia gown Ianthe had selected that morning, the face I didn’t bother to set into a pleasant expression …
“There’s only so much I can do,” he said hoarsely. “But I’ll ask him tonight. About the training. The powers will manifest whether
we train you or not, no matter who is around. I’ll ask him tonight,”
he repeated.
I already knew what the answer would be, though.
Lucien didn’t stop me as I opened the door he’d been leaning against and left without another word. I slept until dinner, roused myself enough to eat—and when I went downstairs, the raised voices of Tamlin, Lucien, and Ianthe sent me right back to the steps.
They will hunt her, and kill her, Ianthe had hissed at Lucien.
Lucien had growled back, They’ll do it anyway, so what’s the difference?
The difference, Ianthe had seethed, lies in us having the advantage of this knowledge—it won’t be Feyre alone who is targeted for the gifts stolen from those High Lords. Your children, she then said to Tamlin , will also have such power. Other High Lords will know that. And if they do not kill Feyre outright, then they might realize what they stand to gain if gifted with offspring from her, too.
My stomach had turned over at the implication. That I might be stolen—and kept—for … breeding. Surely … surely no High Lord would go so far.
If they were to do that, Lucien had countered , none of the other High Lords would stand with them. They would face the wrath of six courts bearing down on them. No one is that stupid.
Rhysand is that stupid, Ianthe had spat. And with that power of his, he could potentially withstand it. Imagine, she said, voice softening as she had no doubt turned to Tamlin , a day might come when he does not return her. You hear the poisoned lies he whispers in her ear. There are other ways around it, she had added with such quiet venom. We might not be able to deal with him, but there are some friends that I made across the sea …
We are not assassins, Lucien had cut in. Rhys is what he is, but who would take his place—
My blood went cold, and I could have sworn ice frosted my fingertips.
Lucien had gone on, his tone pleading, Tamlin. Tam. Just let her train, let her master this—if the other High Lords do come for her, let her stand a chance …
Silence fell as they let Tamlin consider.
My feet began moving the moment I heard the first word out of his mouth, barely more than a growl. No.
With each step up the stairs, I heard the rest.
We give them no reason to suspect she might have any abilities, which training will surely do. Don’t give me that look, Lucien.
Silence again.
Then a vicious snarl, and a shudder of magic rocked the house.
Tamlin’s voice had been low, deadly. Do not push me on this.
I didn’t want to know what was happening in that room, what he’d done to Lucien, what Lucien had even looked like to cause that pulse of power.
I locked the door to my bedroom and did not bother to eat dinner at all.
Tamlin didn’t seek me out that night. I wondered if he, Ianthe, and Lucien were still debating my future and the threats against me.
There were sentries outside of my bedroom the following afternoon—when I finally dragged myself from bed.
According to them, Tamlin and Lucien were already holed up in his study. Without Tamlin’s courtiers poking around, the manor was again silent as I, without anything else to do, headed to walk the garden paths I’d followed so many times I was surprised the pale dirt wasn’t permanently etched with my footprints.
Only my steps sounded in the shining halls as I passed guard after guard, armed to the teeth and trying their best not to gawk at me. Not one spoke to me. Even the servants had taken to keeping to their quarters unless absolutely necessary.
Maybe I’d become too slothful; maybe my lazing about made me more prone to these outbursts. Anyone might have seen me yesterday.
And though we’d never spoken of it … Ianthe knew. About the powers. How long had she been aware? The thought of Tamlin telling her …
My silk slippers scuffed on the marble stairs, the chiffon trail of my green gown slithering behind me.
Such silence. Too much silence.
I needed to get out of this house. Needed to do something. If the villagers didn’t want my help, then fine. I could do other things.
Whatever they were.
I was about to turn down the hall that led to the study, determined to ask Tamlin if there was any task that I might perform, ready to beg him, when the study doors flung open and Tamlin and Lucien emerged, both heavily armed. No sign of Ianthe.
“You’re going so soon?” I said, waiting for them to reach the foyer.
Tamlin’s face was a grim mask as they approached. “There’s activity on the western sea border. I have to go.” The one closest to Hybern.
“Can I come with you?” I’d never asked it outright, but—
Tamlin paused. Lucien continued past, through the open front doors of the house, barely able to hide his wince. “I’m sorry,”
Tamlin said, reaching for me. I stepped out of his grip. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I know how to remain hidden. Just—take me with you.”
“I won’t risk our enemies getting their hands on you.” What enemies? Tell me—tell me something.
I stared over his shoulder, toward where Lucien lingered in the gravel beyond the house entrance. No horses. I supposed they weren’t necessary this time, when they were faster without them.
But maybe I could keep up. Maybe I’d wait until they left and—
“Don’t even think about it,” Tamlin warned.
My attention snapped to his face.
He growled, “Don’t even try to come after us.”
“I can fight,” I tried again. A half-truth. A knack for survival wasn’t the same as trained skill. “Please.”
I’d never hated a word more.
He shook his head, crossing the foyer to the front doors.
I followed him, blurting, “There will always be some threat.
There will always be some conflict or enemy or something that keeps me in here.”
He slowed to a stop just inside the towering oak doors, so lovingly restored after Amarantha’s cronies had trashed them.
“You can barely sleep through the night,” he said carefully.
I retorted, “Neither can you.”
But he just plowed ahead, “You can barely handle being around other people—”
“You promised.” My voice cracked. And I didn’t care that I was begging. “I need to get out of this house.”
“Have Bron take you and Ianthe on a ride—”
“I don’t want to go for a ride!” I splayed my arms. “I don’t want to go for a ride, or a picnic, or pick wildflowers. I want to do something. So take me with you.”
That girl who had needed to be protected, who had craved stability and comfort … she had died Under the Mountain. I had died, and there had been no one to protect me from those horrors before my neck snapped. So I had done it myself. And I would not, could not, yield that part of me that had awoken and transformed Under the Mountain. Tamlin had gotten his powers back, had become whole again—become that protector and provider he wished to be.
I was not the human girl who needed coddling and pampering, who wanted luxury and easiness. I didn’t know how to go back to craving those things. To being docile.
Tamlin’s claws punched out. “Even if I risked it, your untrained abilities render your presence more of a liability than anything.”
It was like being hit with stones—so hard I could feel myself cracking. But I lifted my chin and said, “I’m coming along whether you want me to or not.”
“No, you aren’t.” He strode right through the door, his claws slashing the air at his sides, and was halfway down the steps before I reached the threshold.
Where I slammed into an invisible wall.
I staggered back, trying to reorder my mind around the impossibility of it. It was identical to the one I’d built that day in the study, and I searched inside the shards of my soul, my heart, for a tether to that shield, wondering if I’d blocked myself, but—there was no power emanating from me.
I reached a hand to the open air of the doorway. And met solid resistance.
“Tamlin,” I rasped.
But he was already down the front drive, walking toward the looming iron gates. Lucien remained at the foot of the stairs, his face so, so pale.
“Tamlin,” I said again, pushing against the wall.
He didn’t turn.
I slammed my hand into the invisible barrier. No movement—
nothing but hardened air. And I had not learned about my own powers enough to try to push through, to shatter it … I had let him convince me not to learn those things for his sake—
“Don’t bother trying,” Lucien said softly, as Tamlin cleared the gates and vanished—winnowed. “He shielded the entire house around you. Others can go in and out, but you can’t. Not until he lifts the shield.”
He’d locked me in here.
I hit the shield again. Again.
Nothing.
“Just—be patient, Feyre,” Lucien tried, wincing as he followed after Tamlin. “Please. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try again.”
I barely heard him over the roar in my ears. Didn’t wait to see him pass the gates and winnow, too.
He’d locked me in. He’d sealed me inside this house.
I hurtled for the nearest window in the foyer and shoved it open.
A cool spring breeze rushed in—and I shoved my hand through it
—only for my fingers to bounce off an invisible wall. Smooth, hard air pushed against my skin.
Breathing became difficult.
I was trapped.
I was trapped inside this house. I might as well have been Under the Mountain; I might as well have been inside that cell again—
I backed away, my steps too light, too fast, and slammed into the oak table in the center of the foyer. None of the nearby sentries came to investigate.
He’d trapped me in here; he’d locked me up.
I stopped seeing the marble floor, or the paintings on the walls, or the sweeping staircase looming behind me. I stopped hearing the chirping of the spring birds, or the sighing of the breeze through the curtains.
And then crushing black pounded down and rose up from beneath, devouring and roaring and shredding.
It was all I could do to keep from screaming, to keep from shattering into ten thousand pieces as I sank onto the marble floor, bowing over my knees, and wrapped my arms around myself.
He’d trapped me; he’d trapped me; he’d trapped me—
I had to get out, because I’d barely escaped from another prison once before, and this time, this time—
Winnowing. I could vanish into nothing but air and appear somewhere else, somewhere open and free. I fumbled for my power, for anything, something that might show me the way to do it, the way out. Nothing. There was nothing and I had become nothing, and I couldn’t ever get out—
Someone was shouting my name from far away.
Alis—Alis.
But I was ensconced in a cocoon of darkness and fire and ice and wind, a cocoon that melted the ring off my finger until the golden ore dripped away into the void, the emerald tumbling after it. I wrapped that raging force around myself as if it could keep the walls from crushing me entirely, and maybe, maybe buy me the tiniest sip of air—
I couldn’t get out; I couldn’t get out; I couldn’t get out—
Slender, strong hands gripped me under the shoulders.
I didn’t have the strength to fight them off.
One of those hands moved to my knees, the other to my back, and then I was being lifted, held against what was unmistakably a female body.
I couldn’t see her, didn’t want to see her.
Amarantha.
Come to take me away again; come to kill me at last.
There were words being spoken around me. Two women.
Neither of them … neither of them was Amarantha.
“Please—please take care of her.” Alis.
From right by my ear, the other replied, “Consider yourselves very, very lucky that your High Lord was not here when we
arrived. Your guards will have one hell of a headache when they wake up, but they’re alive. Be grateful.” Mor.
Mor held me—carried me.
The darkness guttered long enough that I could draw breath, that I could see the garden door she walked toward. I opened my mouth, but she peered down at me and said, “Did you think his shield would keep us from you? Rhys shattered it with half a thought.”
But I didn’t spy Rhys anywhere—not as the darkness swirled back in. I clung to her, trying to breathe, to think.
“You’re free,” Mor said tightly. “You’re free.”
Not safe. Not protected.
Free.
She carried me beyond the garden, into the fields, up a hill, down it, and into—into a cave—
I must have started bucking and thrashing in her arms, because she said, “You’re out; you’re free,” again and again and again as true darkness swallowed us.
Half a heartbeat later, she emerged into sunlight—bright, strawberry-and-grass-scented sunlight. I had a thought that this might be Summer, then—
Then a low, vicious growl split the air before us, cleaving even my darkness.
“I did everything by the book,” Mor said to the owner of that growl.
I was passed from her arms to someone else’s, and I struggled to breathe, fought for any trickle of air down my lungs. Until Rhysand said, “Then we’re done here.”
Wind tore at me, along with ancient darkness.
But a sweeter, softer shade of night caressed me, stroking my nerves, my lungs, until I could at last get air inside, until it seduced me into sleep.
I woke to sunlight, and open space—nothing but clear sky and snowcapped mountains around me.
And Rhysand lounging in an armchair across from the couch where I was sprawled, gazing at the mountains, his face uncharacteristically solemn.
I swallowed, and his head whipped toward me.
No kindness in his eyes. Nothing but unending, icy rage.
But he blinked, and it was gone. Replaced by perhaps relief.
Exhaustion.
And the pale sunlight warming the moonstone floors … dawn. It was dawn. I didn’t want to think about how long I’d been unconscious.
“What happened?” I said. My voice was hoarse. As if I’d been screaming.
“You were screaming,” he said. I didn’t care if my mental shield was up or down or completely shattered. “You also managed to scare the shit out of every servant and sentry in Tamlin’s manor when you wrapped yourself in darkness and they couldn’t see you.”
My stomach hollowed out. “Did I hurt any—”
“No. Whatever you did, it was contained to you.”
“You weren’t—”
“By law and protocol,” he said, stretching out his long legs,
“things would have become very complicated and very messy if I had been the one to walk into that house and take you. Smashing that shield was fine, but Mor had to go in on her own two feet, render the sentries unconscious through her own power, and carry you over the border to another court before I could bring you here.
Or else Tamlin would have free rein to march his forces into my lands to reclaim you. And as I have no interest in an internal war, we had to do everything by the book.”
That’s what Mor had said—that she did everything by the book.
But— “When I go back …”
“As your presence here isn’t part of our monthly requirement, you are under no obligation to go back.” He rubbed at his temple.
“Unless you wish to.”
The question settled in me like a stone sinking to the bottom of a pool. There was such quiet in me, such … nothingness.
“He locked me in that house,” I managed to say.
A shadow of mighty wings spread behind Rhys’s chair. But his face was calm as he said, “I know. I felt you. Even with your shields up—for once.”
I made myself meet his stare. “I have nowhere else to go.”
It was both a question and a plea.
He waved a hand, the wings fading. “Stay here for however long you want. Stay here forever, if you feel like it.”
“I—I need to go back at some point.”
“Say the word, and it’s done.” He meant it, too. Even if I could tell from the ire in his eyes that he didn’t like it. He’d bring me back to the Spring Court the moment I asked.
Bring me back to silence, and those sentries, and a life of doing nothing but dressing and dining and planning parties.
He crossed his ankle over a knee. “I made you an offer when you first came here: help me, and food, shelter, clothing … All of it is yours.”
I’d been a beggar in the past. The thought of doing it now …
“Work for me,” Rhysand said. “I owe you, anyway. And we’ll figure out the rest day by day, if need be.”
I looked toward the mountains, as if I could see all the way to the Spring Court in the south. Tamlin would be furious. He’d shred the manor apart.
But he’d … he’d locked me up. Either he so deeply misunderstood me or he’d been so broken by what went on Under the Mountain, but … he’d locked me up.
“I’m not going back.” The words rang in me like a death knell.
“Not—not until I figure things out.” I shoved against the wall of
anger and sorrow and outright despair as my thumb brushed over the vacant band of skin where that ring had once sat.
One day at a time. Maybe—maybe Tamlin would come around.
Heal himself, that jagged wound of festering fear. Maybe I’d sort myself out. I didn’t know.
But I did know that if I stayed in that manor, if I was locked up one more time … It might finish the breaking that Amarantha had started.
Rhysand summoned a mug of hot tea from nowhere and handed it to me. “Drink it.”
I took the mug, letting its warmth soak into my stiff fingers. He watched me until I took a sip, and then went back to monitoring the mountains. I took another sip—peppermint and … licorice and another herb or spice.
I wasn’t going back. Maybe I’d never even … gotten to come back. Not from Under the Mountain.
When the mug was half-finished, I fished for something, anything, to say to keep the crushing silence at bay. “The darkness—is that … part of the power you gave me?”
“One would assume so.”
I drained the rest of the mug. “No wings?”
“If you inherited some of Tamlin’s shape-shifting, perhaps you can make wings of your own.”
A shiver went down my spine at the thought, at the claws I’d grown that day with Lucien. “And the other High Lords? Ice—
that’s Winter. That shield I once made of hardened wind—who did that come from? What might the others have given me? Is—is winnowing tied to any one of you in particular?”
He considered. “Wind? The Day Court, likely. And winnowing—
it’s not confined to any court. It’s wholly dependent on your own reserve of power—and training.” I didn’t feel like mentioning how spectacularly I’d failed to even move an inch. “And as for the gifts you got from everyone else … That’s for you to find out, I suppose.”
“I should have known your goodwill would wear off after a minute.”
Rhys let out a low chuckle and got to his feet, stretching his muscled arms over his head and rolling his neck. As if he’d been
sitting there for a long, long while. For the entirety of the night.
“Rest a day or two, Feyre,” he said. “Then take on the task of figuring out everything else. I have business in another part of my lands; I’ll be back by the end of the week.”
Despite how long I’d slept, I was so tired—tired in my bones, in my crumpled heart. When I didn’t reply, Rhys strode off between the moonstone pillars.
And I saw how I would spend the next few days: in solitude, with nothing to do and only my own, horrible thoughts for company. I began speaking before I could reconsider. “Take me with you.”
Rhys halted as he pushed through two purple gossamer curtains. And slowly, he turned back. “You should rest.”
“I’ve rested enough,” I said, setting down the empty mug and standing. My head spun slightly. When had I last eaten?
“Wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing—take me along.
I’ll stay out of trouble. Just … Please.” I hated the last word; choked on it. It hadn’t done anything to sway Tamlin.
For a long moment, Rhys said nothing. Then he prowled toward me, his long stride eating up the distance and his face set like stone. “If you come with me, there is no going back. You will not be allowed to speak of what you see to anyone outside of my court. Because if you do, people will die— my people will die. So if you come, you will have to lie about it forever; if you return to the Spring Court, you cannot tell anyone there what you see, and who you meet, and what you will witness. If you would rather not have that between you and—your friends, then stay here.”
Stay here, stay locked up in the Spring Court … My chest was a gaping, open wound. I wondered if I’d bleed out from it—if a spirit could bleed out and die. Maybe that had already happened. “Take me with you,” I breathed. “I won’t tell anyone what I see. Even—
them.” I couldn’t bear to say his name.
Rhys studied me for a few heartbeats. And finally he gave me a half smile. “We leave in ten minutes. If you want to freshen up, go ahead.”
An unusually polite reminder that I probably looked like the dead. I felt like it. But I said, “Where are we going?”
Rhys’s smile widened into a grin. “To Velaris—the City of Starlight.”
The moment I entered my room, the hollow quiet returned, washing away with it any questions I might have had about—
about a city.
Everything had been destroyed by Amarantha. If there were a city in Prythian, I would no doubt be visiting a ruin.
I jumped into the bath, scrubbing down as swiftly as I could, then hurried into the Night Court clothes that had been left for me.
My motions were mindless, each one some feeble attempt to keep from thinking about what had happened, what—what Tamlin had tried to do and had done, what I had done—
By the time I returned to the main atrium, Rhys was leaning against a moonstone pillar, picking at his nails. He merely said,
“That was fifteen minutes,” before extending his hand.
I had no glimmering ember to even try to look like I cared about his taunting before we were swallowed by the roaring darkness.
Wind and night and stars wheeled by as he winnowed us through the world, and the calluses of his hand scratched against my own fading ones before—
Before sunlight, not starlight, greeted me. Squinting at the brightness, I found myself standing in what was unmistakably a foyer of someone’s house.
The ornate red carpet cushioned the one step I staggered away from him as I surveyed the warm, wood-paneled walls, the artwork, the straight, wide oak staircase ahead.
Flanking us were two rooms: on my left, a sitting room with a black marble fireplace, lots of comfortable, elegant, but worn furniture, and bookshelves built into every wall. On my right: a dining room with a long, cherrywood table big enough for ten people—small, compared to the dining room at the manor. Down the slender hallway ahead were a few more doors, ending in one that I assumed would lead to a kitchen. A town house.
I’d visited one once, when I was a child and my father had brought me along to the largest town in our territory: it’d belonged
to a fantastically wealthy client, and had smelled like coffee and mothballs. A pretty place, but stuffy—formal.
This house … this house was a home that had been lived in and enjoyed and cherished.
And it was in a city.
“Welcome to my home,” Rhysand said.
A city—a world lay out there.
Morning sunlight streamed through the windows lining the front of the town house. The ornately carved wood door before me was inset with fogged glass that peeked into a small antechamber and the actual front door beyond it, shut and solid against whatever city lurked beyond.
And the thought of setting foot out into it, into the leering crowds, seeing the destruction Amarantha had likely wreaked upon them … A heavy weight pressed into my chest.
I hadn’t dredged up the focus to ask until now, hadn’t given an ounce of room to consider that this might be a mistake, but …
“What is this place?”
Rhys leaned a broad shoulder against the carved oak threshold that led into the sitting room and crossed his arms. “This is my house. Well, I have two homes in the city. One is for more …
official business, but this is only for me and my family.”
I listened for any servants but heard none. Good—maybe that was good, rather than have people weeping and gawking.
“Nuala and Cerridwen are here,” he said, reading my glance down the hall behind us. “But other than that, it’ll just be the two of us.”
I tensed. It wasn’t that things had been any different at the Night Court itself, but—this house was much, much smaller. There would be no escaping him. Save for the city outside.
There were no cities left in our mortal territory. Though some had sprung up on the main continent, full of art and learning and
trade. Elain had once wanted to go with me. I didn’t suppose I’d ever get that chance now.
Rhysand opened his mouth, but then the silhouettes of two tall, powerful bodies appeared on the other side of the front door’s fogged glass. One of them banged on it with a fist.
“Hurry up, you lazy ass,” a deep male voice drawled from the antechamber beyond. Exhaustion drugged me so heavily that I didn’t particularly care that there were wings peeking over their two shadowy forms.
Rhys didn’t so much as blink toward the door. “Two things, Feyre darling.”
The pounding continued, followed by the second male murmuring to his companion, “If you’re going to pick a fight with him, do it after breakfast.” That voice—like shadows given form, dark and smooth and … cold.
“I wasn’t the one who hauled me out of bed just now to fly down here,” the first one said. Then added, “Busybody.”
I could have sworn a smile tugged on Rhys’s lips as he went on,
“One, no one— no one—but Mor and I are able to winnow directly inside this house. It is warded, shielded, and then warded some more. Only those I wish—and you wish—may enter. You are safe here; and safe anywhere in this city, for that matter. Velaris’s walls are well protected and have not been breached in five thousand years. No one with ill intent enters this city unless I allow it. So go where you wish, do what you wish, and see who you wish. Those two in the antechamber,” he added, eyes sparkling, “might not be on that list of people you should bother knowing, if they keep banging on the door like children.”
Another pound, emphasized by the first male voice saying, “You know we can hear you, prick.”
“Secondly,” Rhys went on, “in regard to the two bastards at my door, it’s up to you whether you want to meet them now, or head upstairs like a wise person, take a nap since you’re still looking a little peaky, and then change into city-appropriate clothing while I beat the hell out of one of them for talking to his High Lord like that.”
There was such light in his eyes. It made him look … younger, somehow. More mortal. So at odds with the icy rage I’d seen
Awoken on that couch, and then decided I wasn’t returning home.
Decided that, perhaps, the Spring Court might not be my home.
I was drowning in that old heaviness, clawing my way up to a surface that might not ever exist. I’d slept for the Mother knew how long, and yet … “Just come get me when they’re gone.”
That joy dimmed, and Rhys looked like he might say something else, but a female voice—crisp and edged—now sounded behind the two males in the antechamber. “You Illyrians are worse than cats yowling to be let in the back door.” The knob jangled. She sighed sharply. “Really, Rhysand? You locked us out?”
Fighting to keep that immense heaviness at bay a bit longer, I made for the stairs—at the top of which now stood Nuala and Cerridwen, wincing at the front door. I could have sworn Cerridwen subtly gestured me to hurry up. And I might have kissed both twins for that bit of normalcy.
I might have kissed Rhys, too, for waiting to open the front door until I was halfway down the cerulean-blue hallway on the second level.
All I heard was that first male voice declare, “Welcome home, bastard,” followed by the shadowy male voice saying, “I sensed you were back. Mor filled me in, but I—”
That strange female voice cut him off. “Send your dogs out in the yard to play, Rhysand. You and I have matters to discuss.”
That midnight voice said with quiet cold that licked down my spine, “As do I.”
Then the cocky one drawled to her, “We were here first. Wait your turn, Tiny Ancient One.”
On either side of me, Nuala and Cerridwen flinched, either from holding in laughter or some vestige of fear, or perhaps both.
Definitely both as a feminine snarl sliced through the house—
albeit a bit halfheartedly.
The upstairs hall was punctuated with chandeliers of swirled, colored glass, illuminating the few polished doors on either side. I wondered which belonged to Rhysand—and then wondered which one belonged to Mor as I heard her yawn amid the fray below:
“Why is everyone here so early? I thought we were meeting tonight at the House.”
Below, Rhysand grumbled— grumbled—“Trust me, there’s no party. Only a massacre, if Cassian doesn’t shut his mouth.”
“We’re hungry,” that first male—Cassian—complained. “Feed us. Someone told me there’d be breakfast.”
“Pathetic,” that strange female voice quipped. “You idiots are pathetic.”
Mor said, “We know that’s true. But is there food?”
I heard the words—heard and processed them. And then they floated into the blackness of my mind.
Nuala and Cerridwen opened a door, leading to a fire-warmed, sunlit room. It faced a walled, winter-kissed garden in the back of the town house, the large windows peering over the sleeping stone fountain in its center, drained for the season. Everything in the bedroom itself was of rich wood and soft white, with touches of subtle sage. It felt, strangely enough, almost human.
And the bed—massive, plush, adorned in quilts and duvets of cream and ivory to keep out the winter chill—that looked the most welcoming of all.
But I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t ask a few basic questions
—to at least give myself the illusion of caring a bit about my own welfare.
“Who was that?” I managed to say as they shut the door behind us.
Nuala headed for the small attached bathing room—white marble, a claw-foot tub, more sunny windows that overlooked the garden wall and the thick line of cypress trees that stood watch behind it. Cerridwen, already stalking for the armoire, cringed a bit and said over a shoulder, “They’re Rhysand’s Inner Circle.”
The ones I’d heard mentioned that day at the Night Court—who Rhys kept going to meet. “I wasn’t aware that High Lords kept things so casual,” I admitted.
“They don’t,” Nuala said, returning from the bathing room with a brush. “But Rhysand does.”
Apparently, my hair was a mess, because Nuala brushed it as Cerridwen pulled out some ivory sleeping clothes—a warm and soft lace-trimmed top and pants.
I took in the clothes, then the room, then the winter garden and the slumbering fountain beyond, and Rhysand’s earlier words clicked into place.
The walls of this city have not been breached for five thousand years.
Meaning Amarantha …
“How is this city here?” I met Nuala’s gaze in the mirror. “How—
how did it survive?”
Nuala’s face tightened, and her dark eyes flicked to her twin, who slowly rose from a dresser drawer, fleece-lined slippers for me in hand. Cerridwen’s throat bobbed as she swallowed.
“The High Lord is very powerful,” Cerridwen said—carefully.
“And was devoted to his people long before his father’s mantle passed to him.”
“How did it survive?” I pushed. A city—a lovely one, if the sounds from my window, the garden beyond it, were any indication—lay all around me. Untouched, whole. Safe. While the rest of the world had been left to ruin.
The twins exchanged looks again, some silent language they’d learned in the womb passing between them. Nuala set down the brush on the vanity. “It is not for us to tell.”
“He asked you not to—”
“No,” Cerridwen interrupted, folding back the covers of the bed.
“The High Lord made no such demand. But what he did to shield this city is his story to tell, not ours. We would be more comfortable if he told you, lest we get any of it wrong.”
I glared between them. Fine. Fair enough.
Cerridwen moved to shut the curtains, sealing the room in darkness.
My heart stumbled, taking my anger with it, and I blurted,
“Leave them open.”
I couldn’t be sealed up and shut in darkness—not yet.
Cerridwen nodded and left the curtains open, both of the twins telling me to send word if I needed anything before they departed.
Alone, I slid into the bed, hardly feeling the softness, the smoothness of the sheets.
I listened to the crackling fire, the chirp of birds in the garden’s potted evergreens—so different from the spring-sweet melodies I
was used to. That I might never hear or be able to endure again.
Maybe Amarantha had won after all.
And some strange, new part of me wondered if my never returning might be a fitting punishment for him. For what he had done to me.
Sleep claimed me, swift and brutal and deep.
I awoke four hours later.
It took me minutes to remember where I was, what had happened. And each tick of the little clock on the rosewood writing desk was a shove back-back-back into that heavy dark. But at least I wasn’t tired. Weary, but no longer on the cusp of feeling like sleeping forever.
I’d think about what happened at the Spring Court later.
Tomorrow. Never.
Mercifully, Rhysand’s Inner Circle left before I’d finished dressing.
Rhys was waiting at the front door—which was open to the small wood-and-marble antechamber, which in turn was open to the street beyond. He ran an eye over me, from the suede navy shoes—practical and comfortably made—to the knee-length sky-blue overcoat, to the braid that began on one side of my head and curved around the back. Beneath the coat, my usual flimsy attire had been replaced by thicker, warmer brown pants, and a pretty cream sweater that was so soft I could have slept in it. Knitted gloves that matched my shoes had already been stuffed into the coat’s deep pockets.
“Those two certainly like to fuss,” Rhysand said, though something about it was strained as we headed out the front door.
Each step toward that bright threshold was both an eternity and an invitation.
For a moment, the weight in me vanished as I gobbled down the details of the emerging city:
Buttery sunlight that softened the already mild winter day, a small, manicured front lawn—its dried grass near-white—bordered
with a waist-high wrought iron fence and empty flower beds, all leading toward a clean street of pale cobblestones. High Fae in various forms of dress meandered by: some in coats like mine to ward against the crisp air, some wearing mortal fashions with layers and poofy skirts and lace, some in riding leathers—all unhurried as they breathed in the salt-and-lemon-verbena breeze that even winter couldn’t chase away. Not one of them looked toward the house. As if they either didn’t know or weren’t worried that their own High Lord dwelled in one of the many marble town houses lining either side of the street, each capped with a green copper roof and pale chimneys that puffed tendrils of smoke into the brisk sky.
In the distance, children shrieked with laughter.
I staggered to the front gate, unlatching it with fumbling fingers that hardly registered the ice-cold metal, and took all of three steps into the street before I halted at the sight at the other end.
The street sloped down, revealing more pretty town houses and puffing chimneys, more well-fed, unconcerned people. And at the very bottom of the hill curved a broad, winding river, sparkling like deepest sapphire, snaking toward a vast expanse of water beyond.
The sea.
The city had been built like a crust atop the rolling, steep hills that flanked the river, the buildings crafted from white marble or warm sandstone. Ships with sails of varying shapes loitered in the river, the white wings of birds shining brightly above them in the midday sun.
No monsters. No darkness. Not a hint of fear, of despair.
Untouched.
The city has not been breached in five thousand years.
Even during the height of her dominance over Prythian, whatever Rhys had done, whatever he’d sold or bartered …
Amarantha truly had not touched this place.
The rest of Prythian had been shredded, then left to bleed out over the course of fifty years, yet Velaris … My fingers curled into fists.
I sensed something looming and gazed down the other end of the street.
There, like eternal guardians of the city, towered a wall of flat-topped mountains of red stone—the same stone that had been used to build some of the structures. They curved around the northern edge of Velaris, to where the river bent toward them and flowed into their shadow. To the north, different mountains surrounded the city across the river—a range of sharp peaks like fish’s teeth cleaved the city’s merry hills from the sea beyond. But these mountains behind me … They were sleeping giants.
Somehow alive, awake.
As if in answer, that undulating, slithering power slid along my bones, like a cat brushing against my legs for attention. I ignored it.
“The middle peak,” Rhys said from behind me, and I whirled, remembering he was there. He just pointed toward the largest of the plateaus. Holes and— windows seemed to have been built into the uppermost part of it. And flying toward it, borne on large, dark wings, were two figures. “That’s my other home in this city. The House of Wind.”
Sure enough, the flying figures swerved on what looked to be a wicked, fast current.
“We’ll be dining there tonight,” he added, and I couldn’t tell if he sounded irritated or resigned about it.
And I didn’t quite care. I turned toward the city again and said,
“How?”
He understood what I meant. “Luck.”
“Luck? Yes, how lucky for you,” I said quietly, but not weakly,
“that the rest of Prythian was ravaged while your people, your city, remained safe.”
The wind ruffled Rhys’s dark hair, his face unreadable.
“Did you even think for one moment,” I said, my voice like gravel, “to extend that luck to anywhere else? Anyone else?”
“Other cities,” he said calmly, “are known to the world. Velaris has remained secret beyond the borders of these lands for millennia. Amarantha did not touch it, because she did not know it existed. None of her beasts did. No one in the other courts knows of its existence, either.”
“How?”
“Spells and wards and my ruthless, ruthless ancestors, who were willing to do anything to preserve a piece of goodness in our wretched world.”
“And when Amarantha came,” I said, nearly spitting her name,
“you didn’t think to open this place as a refuge?”
“When Amarantha came,” he said, his temper slipping the leash a bit as his eyes flashed, “I had to make some very hard choices, very quickly.”
I rolled my eyes, twisting away to scan the rolling, steep hills, the sea far beyond. “I’m assuming you won’t tell me about it.” But I had to know—how he’d managed to save this slice of peace and beauty.
“Now’s not the time for that conversation.”
Fine. I’d heard that sort of thing a thousand times before at the Spring Court, anyway. It wasn’t worth dredging up the effort to push about it.
But I wouldn’t sit in my room, couldn’t allow myself to mourn and mope and weep and sleep. So I would venture out, even if it was an agony, even if the size of this place … Cauldron, it was enormous. I jerked my chin toward the city sloping down toward the river. “So what is there that was worth saving at the cost of everyone else?”
When I faced him, his blue eyes were as ruthless as the churning winter sea in the distance. “Everything,” he said.
Rhysand wasn’t exaggerating.
There was everything to see in Velaris: tea shops with delicate tables and chairs scattered outside their cheery fronts, surely heated by some warming spell, all full of chattering, laughing High Fae—and a few strange, beautiful faeries. There were four main market squares; Palaces, they were called: two on this side—the southern side—of the Sidra River, two on the northern.
In the hours that we wandered, I only made it to two of them: great, white-stoned squares flanked by the pillars supporting the carved and painted buildings that watched over them and provided a covered walkway beneath for the shops built into the street level.
The first market we entered, the Palace of Thread and Jewels, sold clothes, shoes, supplies for making both, and jewelry—
endless, sparkling jeweler’s shops. Yet nothing inside me stirred at the glimmer of sunlight on the undoubtedly rare fabrics swaying in the chill river breeze, at the clothes displayed in the broad glass windows, or the luster of gold and ruby and emerald and pearl nestled on velvet beds. I didn’t dare glance at the now-empty finger on my left hand.
Rhys entered a few of the jewelry shops, looking for a present for a friend, he said. I chose to wait outside each time, hiding in the shadows beneath the Palace buildings. Walking around today was enough. Introducing myself, enduring the gawking and tears and judgment … If I had to deal with that, I might very well climb into bed and never get out.
But no one on the streets looked twice at me, even at Rhysand’s side. Perhaps they had no idea who I was—perhaps city-dwellers didn’t care who was in their midst.
The second market, the Palace of Bone and Salt, was one of the Twin Squares: one on this side of the river, the other one—the Palace of Hoof and Leaf—across it, both crammed with vendors selling meat, produce, prepared foods, livestock, confections, spices … So many spices, scents familiar and forgotten from those precious years when I had known the comfort of an invincible father and bottomless wealth.
Rhysand kept a few steps away, hands in his pockets as he offered bits of information every now and then. Yes, he told me, many stores and homes used magic to warm them, especially popular outdoor spaces. I didn’t inquire further about it.
No one avoided him—no one whispered about him or spat on him or stroked him as they had Under the Mountain.
Rather, the people that spotted him offered warm, broad smiles.
Some approached, gripping his hand to welcome him back. He knew each of them by name—and they addressed him by his.
But Rhys grew ever quieter as the afternoon pressed on. We paused at the edge of a brightly painted pocket of the city, built atop one of the hills that flowed right to the river’s edge. I took one look at the first storefront and my bones turned brittle.
The cheery door was cracked open to reveal art and paints and brushes and little sculptures.
Rhys said, “This is what Velaris is known for: the artists’ quarter.
You’ll find a hundred galleries, supply stores, potters’ compounds, sculpture gardens, and anything in between. They call it the Rainbow of Velaris. The performing artists—the musicians, the dancers, the actors—dwell on that hill right across the Sidra. You see the bit of gold glinting near the top? That’s one of the main theaters. There are five notable ones in the city, but that’s the most famous. And then there are the smaller theaters, and the amphitheater on the sea cliffs … ” He trailed off as he noticed my gaze drifting back to the assortment of bright buildings ahead.
High Fae and various lesser faeries I’d never encountered and didn’t know the names of wandered the streets. It was the latter that I noticed more than the others: some long-limbed, hairless, and glowing as if an inner moon dwelled beneath their night-dark skin, some covered in opalescent scales that shifted color with each graceful step of their clawed, webbed feet, some elegant, wild puzzles of horns and hooves and striped fur. Some were bundled in heavy overcoats, scarves, and mittens—others strode about in nothing but their scales and fur and talons and didn’t seem to think twice about it. Neither did anyone else. All of them, however, were preoccupied with taking in the sights, some shopping, some splattered with clay and dust and—and paint.
Artists. I’d never called myself an artist, never thought that far or that grandly, but …
Where all that color and light and texture had once dwelled, there was only a filthy prison cell. “I’m tired,” I managed to say.
I could feel Rhys’s gaze, didn’t care if my shield was up or down to ward against him reading my thoughts. But he only said, “We can come back another day. It’s almost time for dinner, anyway.”
Indeed, the sun was sinking toward where the river met the sea beyond the hills, staining the city pink and gold.
I didn’t feel like painting that, either. Even as people stopped to admire the approaching sunset—as if the residents of this place, this court, had the freedom, the safety of enjoying the sights whenever they wished. And had never known otherwise.
I wanted to scream at them, wanted to pick up a loose piece of cobblestone and shatter the nearest window, wanted to unleash that power again boiling beneath my skin and tell them, show them, what had been done to me, to the rest of the world, while they admired sunsets and painted and drank tea by the river.
“Easy,” Rhys murmured.
I whipped my head to him, my breathing a bit jagged.
His face had again become unreadable. “My people are blameless.”
That easily, my rage vanished, as if it had slipped a rung of the ladder it had been steadily climbing inside me and splattered on the pale stone street.
Yes—yes, of course they were blameless. But I didn’t feel like thinking more on it. On anything. I said again, “I’m tired.”
His throat bobbed, but he nodded, turning from the Rainbow.
“Tomorrow night, we’ll go for a walk. Velaris is lovely in the day, but it was built to be viewed after dark.”
I’d expect nothing less from the City of Starlight, but words had again become difficult.
But—dinner. With him. At that House of Wind. I mustered enough focus to say, “Who, exactly, is going to be at this dinner?”
Rhys led us up a steep street, my thighs burning with the movement. Had I become so out of shape, so weakened? “My Inner Circle,” he said. “I want you to meet them before you decide if this is a place you’d like to stay. If you’d like to work with me, and thus work with them. Mor, you’ve met, but the three others—”
“The ones who came this afternoon.”
A nod. “Cassian, Azriel, and Amren.”
“Who are they?” He’d said something about Illyrians, but Amren
—the female voice I’d heard—hadn’t possessed wings. At least ones I’d glimpsed through the fogged glass.
“There are tiers,” he said neutrally, “within our circle. Amren is my Second in command.”
A female? The surprise must have been written on my face because Rhys said, “Yes. And Mor is my Third. Only a fool would think my Illyrian warriors were the apex predators in our circle.”
Irreverent, cheerful Mor—was Third to the High Lord of the Night Court. Rhys went on, “You’ll see what I mean when you meet
Amren. She looks High Fae, but something different prowls beneath her skin.” Rhys nodded to a passing couple, who bowed their heads in merry greeting. “She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So … be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.”
Some part of me didn’t want to know what manner of creature, exactly, she was. “So if we get into a brawl and I rip off her necklace, she’ll roast and eat me?”
He chuckled. “No—Amren would do far, far worse things than that. The last time Amren and Mor got into it, they left my favorite mountain retreat in cinders.” He lifted a brow. “For what it’s worth, I’m the most powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history, and merely interrupting Amren is something I’ve only done once in the past century.”
The most powerful High Lord in history.
In the countless millennia they had existed here in Prythian, Rhys— Rhys with his smirking and sarcasm and bedroom eyes …
And Amren was worse. And older than five thousand years.
I waited for the fear to hit; waited for my body to shriek to find a way to get out of this dinner, but … nothing. Maybe it’d be a mercy to be ended—
A broad hand gripped my face—gently enough not to hurt, but hard enough to make me look at him. “Don’t you ever think that,”
Rhysand hissed, his eyes livid. “Not for one damned moment.”
That bond between us went taut, and my lingering mental shields collapsed. And for a heartbeat, just as it had happened Under the Mountain, I flashed from my body to his—from my eyes to his own.
I had not realized … how I looked …
My face was gaunt, my cheekbones sharp, my blue-gray eyes dull and smudged with purple beneath. The full lips—my father’s mouth—were wan, and my collarbones jutted above the thick wool neckline of my sweater. I looked as if … as if rage and grief and despair had eaten me alive, as if I was again starved. Not for food, but … but for joy and life—
Then I was back in my body, seething at him. “Was that a trick?”
His voice was hoarse as he lowered his hand from my face.
“No.” He angled his head to the side. “How did you get through it?
My shield.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I hadn’t done anything.
Just … slipped. And I didn’t want to talk about it, not here, not with him. I stormed into a walk, my legs—so damn thin, so useless—
burning with every step up the steep hill.
He gripped my elbow, again with that considerate gentleness, but strong enough to make me pause. “How many other minds have you accidentally slipped into?”
Lucien—
“Lucien?” A short laugh. “What a miserable place to be.”
A low snarl rippled from me. “Do not go into my head.”
“Your shield is down.” I hauled it back up. “You might as well have been shouting his name at me.” Again, that contemplative angling of his head. “Perhaps you having my power … ” He chewed on his bottom lip, then snorted. “It’d make sense, of course, if the power came from me—if my own shield sometimes mistook you for me and let you slip past. Fascinating.”
I debated spitting on his boots. “Take your power back. I don’t want it.”
A sly smile. “It doesn’t work that way. The power is bound to your life. The only way to get it back would be to kill you. And since I like your company, I’ll pass on the offer.” We walked a few steps before he said, “You need to be vigilant about keeping your mental wards up. Especially now that you’ve seen Velaris. If you ever go somewhere else, beyond these lands, and someone slipped into your mind and saw this place …” A muscle quivered in his jaw. “We’re called daemati—those of us who can walk into another person’s mind as if we were going from one room to another. We’re rare, and the trait appears as the Mother wills it, but there are enough of us scattered throughout the world that many—mostly those in positions of influence—extensively train against our skill set. If you were to ever encounter a daemati without those shields up, Feyre, they’d take whatever they wanted. A more powerful one could make you their unwitting slave, make you do whatever they wanted and you’d never know it. My lands remain mystery enough to outsiders that some would
find you, among other things, a highly valuable source of information.”
Daemati—was I now one if I, too, could do such things? Yet another damned title for people to whisper as I passed. “I take it that in a potential war with Hybern, the king’s armies wouldn’t even know to strike here?” I waved a hand to the city around us.
“So, what—your pampered people … those who can’t shield their minds—they get your protection and don’t have to fight while the rest of us will bleed?”
I didn’t let him answer, and just increased my pace. A cheap shot, and childish, but … Inside, inside I had become like that distant sea, relentlessly churning, tossed about by squalls that tore away any sense of where the surface might be.
Rhys kept a step behind for the rest of the walk to the town house.
Some small part of me whispered that I could survive Amarantha; I could survive leaving Tamlin; I could survive transitioning into this new, strange body … But that empty, cold hole in my chest … I wasn’t sure I could survive that.
Even in the years I’d been one bad week away from starvation, that part of me had been full of color, of light. Maybe becoming a faerie had broken it. Maybe Amarantha had broken it.
Or maybe I had broken it, when I shoved that dagger into the hearts of two innocent faeries and their blood had warmed my hands.
“Absolutely not,” I said atop the town house’s small rooftop garden, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my overcoat to warm them against the bite in the night air. There was room enough for a few boxed shrubs and a round iron table with two chairs—and me and Rhysand.
Around us, the city twinkled, the stars themselves seeming to hang lower, pulsing with ruby and amethyst and pearl. Above, the full moon set the marble of the buildings and bridges glowing as if they were all lit from within. Music played, strings and gentle drums, and on either side of the Sidra, golden lights bobbed over
riverside walkways dotted with cafés and shops, all open for the night, already packed.
Life—so full of life. I could nearly taste it crackling on my tongue.
Clothed in black accented with silver thread, Rhysand crossed his arms. And rustled his massive wings as I said, “No.”
“The House of Wind is warded against people winnowing inside
—exactly like this house. Even against High Lords. Don’t ask me why, or who did it. But the option is either walk up the ten thousand steps, which I really do not feel like doing, Feyre, or fly in.” Moonlight glazed the talon at the apex of each wing. He gave me a slow grin that I hadn’t seen all afternoon. “I promise I won’t drop you.”
I frowned at the midnight-blue dress I’d selected—even with the long sleeves and heavy, luxurious fabric, the plunging vee of the neckline did nothing against the cold. I’d debated wearing the sweater and thicker pants, but had opted for finery over comfort. I already regretted it, even with the coat. But if his Inner Circle was anything like Tamlin’s court … better to wear the more formal attire. I winced at the swath of night between the roof and the mountain-residence. “The wind will rip the gown right off.”
His grin became feline.
“I’ll take the stairs,” I seethed, the anger welcome from the past few hours of numbness as I headed for the door at the end of the roof.
Rhys snapped out a wing, blocking my path.
Smooth membrane—flecked with a hint of iridescence. I peeled back. “Nuala spent an hour on my hair.”
An exaggeration, but she had fussed while I’d sat there in hollow silence, letting her tease the ends into soft curls and pin a section along the top of my head with pretty gold barrettes. But maybe staying inside tonight, alone and quiet … maybe it’d be better than facing these people. Than interacting.
Rhys’s wing curved around me, herding me closer to where I could nearly feel the heat of his powerful body. “I promise I won’t let the wind destroy your hair.” He lifted a hand as if he might tug on one of those loose curls, then lowered it.
“If I’m to decide whether I want to work against Hybern with you
—with your Inner Circle, can’t we just … meet here?”
“They’re all up there already. And besides, the House of Wind has enough space that I won’t feel like chucking them all off the mountain.”
I swallowed. Sure enough, curving along the top of the center mountain behind us, floors of lights glinted, as if the mountain had been crowned in gold. And between me and that crown of light was a long, long stretch of open air. “You mean,” I said, because it might have been the only weapon in my arsenal, “that this town house is too small, and their personalities are too big, and you’re worried I might lose it again.”
His wing pushed me closer, a whisper of warmth on my shoulder. “So what if I am?”
“I’m not some broken doll.” Even if this afternoon, that conversation we’d had, what I’d glimpsed through his eyes, said otherwise. But I yielded another step.
“I know you’re not. But that doesn’t mean I’ll throw you to the wolves. If you meant what you said about wanting to work with me to keep Hybern from these lands, keep the wall intact, I want you to meet my friends first. Decide on your own if it’s something you can handle. And I want this meeting to be on my terms, not whenever they decide to ambush this house again.”
“I didn’t know you even had friends.” Yes—anger, sharpness …
It felt good. Better than feeling nothing.
A cold smile. “You didn’t ask.”
Rhysand was close enough now that he slid a hand around my waist, both of his wings encircling me. My spine locked up. A cage
—
The wings swept back.
But he tightened his arm. Bracing me for takeoff. Mother save me. “You say the word tonight, and we come back here, no questions asked. And if you can’t stomach working with me, with them, then no questions asked on that, either. We can find some other way for you to live here, be fulfilled, regardless of what I need. It’s your choice, Feyre.”
I debated pushing him on it—on insisting I stay. But stay for what? To sleep? To avoid a meeting I should most certainly have
before deciding what I wanted to do with myself? And to fly …
I studied the wings, the arm around my waist. “Please don’t drop me. And please don’t—”
We shot into the sky, fast as a shooting star.
Before my yelp finished echoing, the city had yawned wide beneath us. Rhys’s hand slid under my knees while the other wrapped around my back and ribs, and we flapped up, up, up into the star-freckled night, into the liquid dark and singing wind.
The city lights dropped away until Velaris was a rippling velvet blanket littered with jewels, until the music no longer reached even our pointed ears. The air was chill, but no wind other than a gentle breeze brushed my face—even as we soared with magnificent precision for the House of Wind.
Rhys’s body was hard and warm against mine, a solid force of nature crafted and honed for this. Even the smell of him reminded me of the wind—rain and salt and something citrus-y I couldn’t name.
We swerved into an updraft, rising so fast it was instinct to clutch his black tunic as my stomach clenched. I scowled at the soft laugh that tickled my ear. “I expected more screaming from you. I must not be trying hard enough.”
“Do not,” I hissed, focusing on the approaching tiara of lights in the eternal wall of the mountain.
With the sky wheeling overhead and the lights shooting past below, up and down became mirrors—until we were sailing through a sea of stars. Something tight in my chest eased a fraction of its grip.
“When I was a boy,” Rhys said in my ear, “I’d sneak out of the House of Wind by leaping out my window—and I’d fly and fly all night, just making loops around the city, the river, the sea.
Sometimes I still do.”
“Your parents must have been thrilled.”
“My father never knew—and my mother …” A pause. “She was Illyrian. Some nights, when she caught me right as I leaped out the window, she’d scold me … and then jump out herself to fly with me until dawn.”
“She sounds lovely,” I admitted.
“She was,” he said. And those two words told me enough about his past that I didn’t pry.
A maneuver had us rising higher, until we were in direct line with a broad balcony, gilded by the light of golden lanterns. At the far end, built into the red mountain itself, two glass doors were already open, revealing a large, but surprisingly casual dining room carved from the stone, and accented with rich wood. Each chair fashioned, I noted, to accomodate wings.
Rhys’s landing was as smooth as his takeoff, though he kept an arm beneath my shoulders as my knees buckled at the adjustment. I shook off his touch, and faced the city behind us.
I’d spent so much time squatting in trees that heights had lost their primal terror long ago. But the sprawl of the city … worse, the vast expanse of dark beyond—the sea … Maybe I remained a human fool to feel that way, but I had not realized the size of the world. The size of Prythian, if a city this large could remain hidden from Amarantha, from the other courts.
Rhysand was silent beside me. Yet after a moment, he said,
“Out with it.”
I lifted a brow.
“You say what’s on your mind—one thing. And I’ll say one, too.”
I shook my head and turned back to the city.
But Rhys said, “I’m thinking that I spent fifty years locked Under the Mountain, and I’d sometimes let myself dream of this place, but I never expected to see it again. I’m thinking that I wish I had been the one who slaughtered her. I’m thinking that if war comes, it might be a long while yet before I get to have a night like this.”
He slid his eyes to me, expectant.
I didn’t bother asking again how he’d kept this place from her, not when he was likely to refuse to answer. So I said, “Do you think war will be here that soon?”
“This was a no-questions-asked invitation. I told you … three things. Tell me one.”