He’d murdered Rhysand’s family. The High Lord I’d loved—he’d murdered his friend’s family, and when I’d asked how his family died, he’d merely told me a rival court had done it. Rhysand had done it, and—
“He didn’t tell you any of that.”
“I—I’m sorry,” I breathed, my voice hoarse.
“What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know that he’d done that—”
And Rhys thought I’d been comparing him—comparing him against Tamlin, as if I held him to be some paragon …
“Why did you stop?” he said, motioning to the ice shards on the pine-needle carpet.
The people he’d loved most—gone. Slaughtered in cold blood. Slaughtered by Tamlin.
The clearing exploded in flame.
The pine needles vanished, the trees groaned, and even Rhys swore as fire swept through the clearing, my heart, and devoured everything in its path.
No wonder he’d made Tamlin beg that day I’d been formally introduced to him. No wonder he’d relished every chance to taunt Tamlin. Maybe my presence here was just to—
No. I knew that wasn’t true. I knew my being here had nothing to do with what was between him and Tamlin, though he no doubt enjoyed interrupting our wedding day. Saved me from that wedding day, actually.
“Feyre,” Rhys said as the fire died.
But there it was—crackling inside my veins. Crackling beside veins of ice, and water.
And darkness.
Embers flared around us, floating in the air, and I sent out a breath of soothing dark, a breath of ice and water, as if it were a wind—a wind at dawn, sweeping clean the world.
The power did not belong to the High Lords. Not any longer.
It belonged to me—as I belonged only to me, as my future was mine to decide, to forge.
Once I discovered and mastered what the others had given me, I could weave them together—into something new, something of every court and none of them.
Flame hissed as it was extinguished so thoroughly that no smoke remained.
But I met Rhys’s stare, his eyes a bit wide as he watched me work. I rasped, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
The sight of him in his Illyrian fighting gear, wings spread across the entire width of the clearing, his blade peeking over his shoulder …
There, in that hole in my chest—I saw the image there. At first interpretation, he’d look terrifying, vengeance and wrath incarnate. But if you came closer … the painting would show the beauty on his face, the wings flared not to hurt, but to carry me from danger, to shield me.
“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to turn you against him,” he said.
The painting—I could see it; feel it. I wanted to paint it.
I wanted to paint.
I didn’t wait for him to stretch out his hand before I went to him. And looking up into his face I said, “I want to paint you.”
He gently lifted me into his arms. “Nude would be best,” he said in my ear.
CHAPTER
46
I was so cold I might never be warm again. Even during winter in the mortal realm, I’d managed to find some kernel of heat, but after nearly emptying my cache of magic that afternoon, even the roaring hearth fire couldn’t thaw the chill around my bones. Did spring ever come to this blasted place?
“They pick these locations,” Cassian said across from me as we dined on mutton stew around the table tucked into the corner of the front of the stone house. “Just to ensure the strongest among us survive.”
“Horrible people,” Mor grumbled into her earthenware bowl. “I don’t blame Az for never wanting to come here.”
“I take it training the girls went well,” Rhys drawled from beside me, his thigh so close its warmth brushed my own.
Cassian drained his mug of ale. “I got one of them to confess they hadn’t received a lesson in ten days. They’d all been too busy with ‘chores,’ apparently.”
“No born fighters in this lot?”
“Three, actually,” Mor said. “Three out of ten isn’t bad at all. The others, I’d be happy if they just learned to defend themselves. But those three … They’ve got the instinct—the claws. It’s their stupid families that want them clipped and breeding.”
I rose from the table, taking my bowl to the sink tucked into the wall. The house was simple, but still bigger and in better condition than our old cottage. The front room served as kitchen, living area, and dining room, with three doors in the back: one for the cramped bathing room, one for the storage room, and one being a back door, because no true Illyrian, according to Rhys, ever made a home with only one exit.
“When do you head for the Hewn City tomorrow?” Cassian said to her—quietly enough that I knew it was probably time to head upstairs.
Mor scraped the bottom of her bowl. Apparently, Cassian had made the stew—it hadn’t been half-bad. “After breakfast. Before. I don’t know. Maybe in the afternoon, when they’re all just waking up.”
Rhys was a step behind me, bowl in hand, and motioned to leave my dirty dish in the sink. He inclined his head toward the steep, narrow stairs at the back of the house. They were wide enough to fit only one Illyrian warrior—another safety measure—and I glanced at the table one last time before disappearing upstairs.
Mor and Cassian both stared at their empty bowls of food, softly talking for once.
Every step upward, I could feel Rhys at my back, the heat of him, the ebb and flow of his power. And in this small space, the scent of him washed over me, beckoned to me.
Upstairs was dark, illuminated by the small window at the end of the hall, and the moonlight streaming in through a thin gap in the pines around us. There were only two doors up here, and Rhys pointed to one of them. “You and Mor can share tonight—just tell her to shut up if she babbles too much.” I wouldn’t, though. If she needed to talk, to distract herself and be ready for what was to come tomorrow, I’d listen until dawn.
He put a hand on his own doorknob, but I leaned against the wood of my door.
It’d be so easy to take the three steps to cross the hall.
To run my hands over that chest, trace those beautiful lips with my own.
I swallowed as he turned to me.
I didn’t want to think what it meant, what I was doing. What this was—whatever it was—between us.
Because things between us had never been normal, not from the very first moment we’d met on Calanmai. I’d been unable to easily walk away from him then, when I’d thought he was deadly, dangerous. But now …
Traitor, traitor, traitor—
He opened his mouth, but I had already slipped inside my room and shut the door.
Freezing rain trickled through the pine boughs as I stalked through the mists in my Illyrian fighting leathers, armed with a bow, quiver, and knives, shivering like a wet dog.
Rhys was a few hundred feet behind, carrying our packs. We’d flown deep into the forest steppes, far enough that we’d have to spend the night out here. Far enough that no one and nothing might see another “glorious explosion of flame and temper,” as Rhys had put it. Azriel hadn’t brought word from my sisters of the queens’ status, so we had time to spare. Though Rhys certainly hadn’t looked like it when he informed me that morning. But at least we wouldn’t have to camp out here. Rhys had promised there was some sort of wayfarer’s inn nearby.
I turned toward where Rhys trailed behind me, spotting his massive wings first. Mor had set off before I’d even been awake, and Cassian had been pissy and on edge during breakfast … So much so that I’d been glad to leave as soon as I’d finished my porridge. And felt slightly bad for the Illyrians who had to deal with him that day.
Rhys paused once he caught up, and even with the trees and rain between us, I could see his brows lift in silent question of why I’d paused. We hadn’t spoken of Starfall or the Court of Nightmares—and last night, as I twisted and turned in the t
iny bed, I’d decided: fun and distraction. It didn’t need to be complicated. Keeping things purely physical … well, it didn’t feel like as much of a betrayal.
I lifted a hand, signaling Rhys to stay where he was. After yesterday, I didn’t want him too close, lest I burn him. Or worse. He sketched a dramatic bow, and I rolled my eyes as I stalked to the stream ahead, contemplating where I might indeed try to play with Beron’s fire. My fire.
Every step away, I could feel Rhys’s stare devouring me. Or maybe that was through the bond, brushing against my mental shields—flashes of hunger so insatiable that it was an effort to focus on the task ahead and not on the feeling of what his hands had been like, stroking my thighs, pushing me against him.
I could have sworn I felt a trickle of amusement on the other side of my mental shield, too. I hissed and made a vulgar gesture over my shoulder, even as I let my shield drop, just a bit.
That amusement turned into full delight—and then a lick of pleasure that went straight down my spine. Lower.
My face heated, and a twig cracked under my boot, as loud as lightning. I gritted my teeth. The ground sloped toward a gray, gushing stream, fast enough that it had to be fed by the towering snow-blasted mountains in the distance.
Good—this spot was good. An extra supply of water to drown any flames that might escape, plenty of open space. The wind blew away from me, tugging my scent southward, deeper into the forest as I opened my mouth to tell Rhys to stay back.
With that wind, and the roaring stream, it was no surprise that I didn’t hear them until they had surrounded me.
“Feyre.”
I whirled, arrow nocked and aimed at the source of the voice—
Four Spring Court sentinels stalked from the trees behind me like wraiths, armed to the teeth and wide-eyed. Two, I knew: Bron and Hart.
And between them stood Lucien.
CHAPTER
47
If I wanted to escape, I could either face the stream or face them. But Lucien …
His red hair was tied back, and there wasn’t a hint of finery on him: just armored leather, swords, knives … His metal eye roamed over me, his golden skin pale. “We’ve been hunting for you for over two months,” he breathed, now scanning the woods, the stream, the sky.
Rhys. Cauldron save me. Rhys was too far back, and—
“How did you find me?” My steady, cold voice wasn’t one I recognized. But—hunting for me. As if I were indeed prey.
If Tamlin was here … My blood went icier than the freezing rain now sluicing down my face, into my clothes.
“Someone tipped us off you’d been out here, but it was luck that we caught your scent on the wind, and—” Lucien took a step toward me.
I stepped back. Only three feet between me and the stream.
Lucien’s eye widened slightly. “We need to get out of here. Tamlin’s been—he hasn’t been himself. I’ll take you right to—”
“No,” I breathed.
The word rasped through the rain, the stream, the pine forest.
The four sentinels glanced between each other, then to the arrow I kept aimed.
Lucien took me in again.
And I could see what he was now gleaning: the Illyrian fighting leathers. The color and fullness that had returned to my face, my body.
And the silent steel of my eyes.
“Feyre,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s go home.”
I didn’t move. “That stopped being my home the day you let him lock me up inside of it.”
Lucien’s mouth tightened. “It was a mistake. We all made mistakes. He’s sorry—more sorry than you realize. So am I.” He stepped toward me, and I backed up another few inches.
Not much space remained between me and the gushing waters below.
Cassian’s training crashed into me, as if all the lessons he’d been drilling into me each morning were a net that caught me as I free-fell into my rising panic. Once Lucien touched me, he’d winnow us out. Not far—he wasn’t that powerful—but he was fast. He’d jump miles away, then farther, and farther, until Rhys couldn’t reach me. He knew Rhys was here.
“Feyre,” Lucien pleaded, and dared another step, his hand outraised.
My arrow angled toward him, my bowstring groaning.
I’d never realized that while Lucien had been trained as a warrior, Cassian, Azriel, Mor, and Rhys were Warriors. Cassian could wipe Lucien off the face of the earth in a single blow.
“Put the arrow down,” Lucien murmured, like he was soothing a wild animal.
Behind him, the four sentinels closed in. Herding me.
The High Lord’s pet and possession.
“Don’t,” I breathed. “Touch. Me.”
“You don’t understand the mess we’re in, Feyre. We—I need you home. Now.”
I didn’t want to hear it. Peering at the stream below, I calculated my odds.
The look cost me. Lucien lunged, hand out. One touch, that was all it’d take—
I was not the High Lord’s pet any longer.
And maybe the world should learn that I did indeed have fangs.
Lucien’s finger grazed the sleeve of my leather jacket.
And I became smoke and ash and night.
The world stilled and bent, and there was Lucien, lunging so slowly for what was now blank space as I stepped around him, as I hurtled for the trees behind the sentinels.
I stopped, and time resumed its natural flow. Lucien staggered, catching himself before he went over the cliff—and whirled, eye wide to discover me now standing behind his sentinels. Bron and Hart flinched and backed away. From me.
And from Rhysand at my side.
Lucien froze. I made my face a mirror of ice; the unfeeling twin to the cruel amusement on Rhysand’s features as he picked at a fleck of lint on his dark tunic.
Dark, elegant clothes—no wings, no fighting leathers.
The unruffled, fine clothes … Another weapon. To hide just how skilled and powerful he was; to hide where he came from and what he loved. A weapon worth the cost of the magic he’d used to hide it—even if it put us at risk of being tracked.
“Little Lucien,” Rhys purred. “Didn’t the Lady of the Autumn Court ever tell you that when a woman says no, she means it?”
“Prick,” Lucien snarled, storming past his sentinels, but not daring to touch his weapons. “You filthy, whoring prick.”
I loosed a growl.
Lucien’s eyes sliced to me and he said with quiet horror, “What have you done, Feyre?”
“Don’t come looking for me again,” I said with equal softness.
“He’ll never stop looking for you; never stop waiting for you to come home.”
The words hit me in the gut—like they were meant to. It must have shown in my face because Lucien pressed, “What did he do to you? Did he take your mind and—”
“Enough,” Rhys said, angling his head with that casual grace. “Feyre and I are busy. Go back to your lands before I send your heads as a reminder to my old friend about what happens when Spring Court flunkies set foot in my territory.”
The freezing rain slid down the neck of my clothes, down my back. Lucien’s face was deathly pale. “You made your point, Feyre—now come home.”
“I’m not a child playing games,” I said through my teeth. That’s how they’d seen me: in need of coddling, explaining, defending …
“Careful, Lucien,” Rhysand drawled. “Or Feyre darling will send you back in pieces, too.”
“We are not your enemies, Feyre,” Lucien pleaded. “Things got bad, Ianthe got out of hand, but it doesn’t mean you give up—”
“You gave up,” I breathed.
I felt even Rhys go still.
“You gave up on me,” I said a bit more loudly. “You were my friend. And you picked him—picked obeying him, even when you saw what his orders and his rules did to me. Even when you saw me wasting away day by day.”
“You have no idea how volatile those first few mon
ths were,” Lucien snapped. “We needed to present a unified, obedient front, and I was supposed to be the example to which all others in our court were held.”
“You saw what was happening to me. But you were too afraid of him to truly do anything about it.”
It was fear. Lucien had pushed Tamlin, but to a point. He’d always yielded at the end.
“I begged you,” I said, the words sharp and breathless. “I begged you so many times to help me, to get me out of the house, even for an hour. And you left me alone, or shoved me into a room with Ianthe, or told me to stick it out.”
Lucien said too quietly, “And I suppose the Night Court is so much better?”
I remembered—remembered what I was supposed to know, to have experienced. What Lucien and the others could never know, not even if it meant forfeiting my own life.
And I would. To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and … Rhys safe.
I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, “When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.”
A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illryian wings.
Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?”
I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.”
Lucien started shaking his head. “Feyre—”
“Tell Tamlin,” I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he’d done to Rhys, to his family, “if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.”
There was something like genuine pain on his face.
I didn’t care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, centuries … until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savor the pain of others.