A Court of Mist and Fury (42 page)

But here, being those things wouldn’t earn me a ticket to a life of party planning. Here, I could be soft and lovely at sunset, and awaken in the morning to slide into Illyrian fighting leathers.

Tarquin said, “We managed to smuggle out most of our treasure when the territory fell. Nostrus—my predecessor—was my cousin. I served as prince of another city. So I got the order to hide the trove in the dead of night, fast as we could.”

Amarantha had killed Nostrus when he’d rebelled—and executed
his entire family for spite. Tarquin must have been one of the few surviving members, if the power had passed to him.

“I didn’t know the Summer Court valued treasure so much,” I said.

Tarquin huffed a laugh. “The earliest High Lords did. We do now out of tradition, mostly.”

I said carefully, casually, “So is it gold and jewels you value, then?”

“Among other things.”

I sipped my wine to buy time to think of a way to ask without raising suspicions. But maybe being direct about it would be better. “Are outsiders allowed to see the collection? My father was a merchant—I spent most of my childhood in his office, helping him with his goods. It would be interesting to compare mortal riches to those made by Fae hands.”

Rhys kept talking to Cresseida, not even a hint of approval or amusement going through our bond.

Tarquin cocked his head, the jewels in his crown glinting. “Of course. Tomorrow—after lunch, perhaps?”

He wasn’t stupid, and he might have been aware of the game, but … the offer was genuine. I smiled a bit, nodding. I looked toward the crowd milling about on the deck below, the lantern-lit water beyond, even as I felt Tarquin’s gaze linger.

He said, “What was it like? The mortal world?”

I picked at the strawberry salad on my plate. “I only saw a very small slice of it. My father was called the Prince of Merchants—but I was too young to be taken on his voyages to other parts of the mortal world. When I was eleven, he lost our fortune on a shipment to Bharat. We spent the next eight years in poverty, in a backwater village near the wall. So I can’t speak for the entirety of the mortal world when I say that what I saw there was … hard. Brutal. Here, class lines are far more blurred, it seems. There, it’s defined by money. Either you have it and you don’t share it, or you are left to starve and fight for your survival.
My father … He regained his wealth once I went to Prythian.” My heart tightened, then dropped into my stomach. “And the very people who had been content to let us starve were once again our friends. I would rather face every creature in Prythian than the monsters on the other side of the wall. Without magic, without power, money has become the only thing that matters.”

Tarquin’s lips were pursed, but his eyes were considering. “Would you spare them if war came?”

Such a dangerous, loaded question. I wouldn’t tell him what we were doing over the wall—not until Rhys had indicated we should.

“My sisters dwell with my father on his estate. For them, I would fight. But for those sycophants and peacocks … I would not mind to see their order disrupted.” Like the hate-mongering family of Elain’s betrothed.

Tarquin said very quietly, “There are some in Prythian who would think the same of the courts.”

“What—get rid of the High Lords?”

“Perhaps. But mostly eliminate the inherent privileges of High Fae over the lesser faeries. Even the terms imply a level of unfairness. Maybe it is more like the human realm than you realize, not as blurred as it might seem. In some courts, the lowest of High Fae servants has more rights than the wealthiest of lesser faeries.”

I became aware that we were not the only people on the barge, at this table. And that we were surrounded by High Fae with animal-keen hearing. “Do you agree with them? That it should change?”

“I am a young High Lord,” he said. “Barely eighty years old.” So he’d been thirty when Amarantha took over. “Perhaps others might call me inexperienced or foolish, but I have seen those cruelties firsthand, and known many good lesser faeries who suffered for merely being born on the wrong side of power. Even within my own residences, the confines of tradition pressure me to enforce the rules of my predecessors: the lesser faeries are neither to be seen nor heard as they work. I
would like to one day see a Prythian in which they have a voice, both in my home and in the world beyond it.”

I scanned him for any deceit, manipulation. I found none.

Steal from him—I
would
steal from him. But what if I asked instead? Would he give it to me, or would the traditions of his ancestors run too deep?

“Tell me what that look means,” Tarquin said, bracing his muscled arms on the gold tablecloth.

I said baldly, “I’m thinking it would be very easy to love you. And easier to call you my friend.”

He smiled at me—broad and without restraint. “I would not object to either.”

Easy—very easy to fall in love with a kind, considerate male.

But I glanced over at Cresseida, who was now almost in Rhysand’s lap. And Rhysand was smiling like a cat, one finger tracing circles on the back of her hand while she bit her lip and beamed. I faced Tarquin, my brows high in silent question.

He made a face and shook his head.

I hoped they went to her room.

Because if I had to listen to Rhys bed her … I didn’t let myself finish the thought.

Tarquin mused, “It has been many years since I saw her look like that.”

My cheeks heated—shame. Shame for what? Wanting to throttle her for no good reason? Rhysand teased and taunted me—he never … seduced me, with those long, intent stares, the half smiles that were pure Illyrian arrogance.

I supposed I’d been granted that gift once—and had used it up and fought for it and broken it. And I supposed that Rhysand, for all he had sacrificed and done … He deserved it as much as Cresseida.

Even if … even if for a moment, I wanted it.

I wanted to feel like that again.

And … I was lonely.

I had been lonely, I realized, for a very, very long time.

Rhys leaned in to hear something Cresseida was saying, her lips brushing his ear, her hand now entwining with his.

And it wasn’t sorrow, or despair, or terror that hit me, but … unhappiness. Such bleak, sharp unhappiness that I got to my feet.

Rhys’s eyes shifted toward me, at last remembering I existed, and there was nothing on his face—no hint that he felt any of what I did through our bond. I didn’t care if I had no shield, if my thoughts were wide open and he read them like a book. He didn’t seem to care, either. He went back to chuckling at whatever Cresseida was telling him, sliding closer.

Tarquin had risen to his feet, scanning me and Rhys.

I was unhappy—not just broken. But unhappy.

An emotion, I realized. It was an emotion, rather than the unending emptiness or survival-driven terror.

“I need some fresh air,” I said, even though we were in the open. But with the golden lights, the people up and down the table … I needed to find a spot on this barge where I could be alone, just for a moment, mission or no.

“Would you like me to join you?”

I looked at the High Lord of Summer. I hadn’t lied. It would be easy to fall in love with a male like him. But I wasn’t entirely sure that even with the hardships he’d encountered Under the Mountain, Tarquin could understand the darkness that might always be in me. Not only from Amarantha, but from years spent being hungry, and desperate.

That I might always be a little bit vicious or restless. That I might crave peace, but never a cage of comfort.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, and headed for the sweeping staircase that led down onto the stern of the ship—brightly lit, but quieter than the main areas at the prow. Rhys didn’t so much as look in my direction as I walked away. Good riddance.

I was halfway down the wood steps when I spotted Amren and Varian—both leaning against adjacent pillars, both drinking wine, both ignoring each other. Even as they spoke to no one else.

Perhaps that was another reason why she’d come: to distract Tarquin’s watchdog.

I reached the main deck, found a spot by the wooden railing that was a bit more shadowed than the rest, and leaned against it. Magic propelled the boat—no oars, no sails. So we moved through the bay, silent and smooth, hardly a ripple in our wake.

I didn’t realize I’d been waiting for him until the barge docked at the base of the island-city, and I’d somehow spent the entire final hour alone.

When I filed onto land with the rest of the crowd, Amren, Varian, and Tarquin were waiting for me at the docks, all a bit stiff-backed.

Rhysand and Cresseida were nowhere to be seen.

C
HAPTE
R

34

Mercifully, there was no sound from his closed bedroom. And no sounds came out of it during that night, when I jolted awake from a nightmare of being turned over a spit, and couldn’t remember where I was.

Moonlight danced on the sea beyond my open windows, and there was silence—such silence.

A weapon. I was a weapon to find that book, to stop the king from breaking the wall, to stop whatever he had planned for Jurian and the war that might destroy my world. That might destroy this place—and a High Lord who might very well overturn the order of things.

For a heartbeat, I missed Velaris, missed the lights and the music and the Rainbow. I missed the cozy warmth of the town house to welcome me in from the crisp winter, missed … what it had been like to be a part of their little unit.

Maybe wrapping his wings around me, writing me notes, had been Rhys’s way of ensuring his weapon didn’t break beyond repair.

That was fine—fair enough. We owed each other nothing beyond our promises to work and fight together.

He could still be my friend. Companion—whatever this thing was between us. His taking someone to his bed didn’t change those things.

It’d just been a relief to think that for a moment, he might have been as lonely as me.

I didn’t have the nerve to come out of my room for breakfast, to see if Rhys had returned.

To see whom he came to breakfast with.

I had nothing else to do, I told myself as I lay in bed, until my lunchtime visit with Tarquin. So I stayed there until the servants came in, apologized for disturbing me, and started to leave. I stopped them, saying I’d bathe while they cleaned the room. They were polite—if nervous—and merely nodded as I did as I’d claimed.

I took my time in the bath. And behind the locked door, I let that kernel of Tarquin’s power come out, first making the water rise from the tub, then shaping little animals and creatures out of it.

It was about as close to transformation as I’d let myself go. Contemplating how I might give myself animalistic features only made me shaky, sick. I could ignore it, ignore that occasional scrape of claws in my blood for a while yet.

I was on to water-butterflies flitting through the room when I realized I’d been in the tub long enough that the bath had gone cold.

Like the night before, Nuala walked through the walls from wherever
she
was staying in the palace, and dressed me, somehow attuned to when I’d be ready. Cerridwen, she told me, had drawn the short stick and was seeing to Amren. I didn’t have the nerve to ask about Rhys, either.

Nuala selected seafoam green accented with rose gold, curling and then braiding back my hair in a thick, loose plait glimmering with bits of pearl. Whether Nuala knew why I was there, what I’d be doing, she
didn’t say. But she took extra care of my face, brightening my lips with raspberry pink, dusting my cheeks with the faintest blush. I might have looked innocent, charming—were it not for my gray-blue eyes. More hollow than they’d been last night, when I’d admired myself in the mirror.

I’d seen enough of the palace to navigate to where Tarquin had said to meet before we bid good night. The main hall was situated on a level about halfway up—the perfect meeting place for those who dwelled in the spires above and those who worked unseen and unheard below.

This level held all the various council rooms, ballrooms, dining rooms, and whatever other rooms might be needed for visitors, events, gatherings. Access to the residential levels from which I’d come was guarded by four soldiers at each stairwell—all of whom watched me carefully as I waited against a seashell pillar for their High Lord. I wondered if he could sense that I’d been playing with his power in the bathtub, that the piece of him he’d yielded was now here and answering to me.

Tarquin emerged from one of the adjacent rooms as the clock struck two—followed by my own companions.

Rhysand’s gaze swept over me, noting the clothes that were obviously in honor of my host and his people. Noting the way I did not meet his eyes, or Cresseida’s, as I looked solely at Tarquin and Amren beside him—Varian now striding off to the soldiers at the stairs—and gave them both a bland, close-lipped smile.

“You’re looking well today,” Tarquin said, inclining his head.

Nuala, it seemed, was a spectacularly good spy. Tarquin’s pewter tunic was accented with the same shade of seafoam green as my clothes. We might as well have been a matching set. I supposed with my brown-gold hair and pale skin, I was his mirror opposite.