A Court of Mist and Fury (20 page)

“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.