A Court of Mist and Fury (79 page)

Then Mor, swift as an adder, winnowed to Lucien. To my sisters. To show Rhys, I realized, what I’d done, the hole I’d blasted for them to escape—

She slammed Lucien away with a palm to the chest, and his roar shook the halls as Mor grabbed my sisters by the arm and vanished.

Lucien’s bellow was still sounding as Rhys lunged, gripping Azriel and Cassian, and did not even turn toward me as they winnowed out.

The king shot to his feet, spewing his wrath at his guards, at Jurian, for not grabbing my sisters. Demanding to know what had happened to the castle wards—

I barely heard him. There was only silence in my head. Such silence where there had once been dark laughter and wicked amusement. A wind-blasted wasteland.

Lucien was shaking his head, panting, and whirled to us. “
Get her back
,” he snarled at Tamlin over the ranting of the king. A mate—a mate already going wild to defend what was his.

Tamlin ignored him. So I did, too. I could barely stand, but I faced the king as he slumped into his throne, gripping the arms so tightly the whites of his knuckles showed. “Thank you,” I breathed, a hand on my chest—the skin so pale, so white. “Thank you.”

He merely said to the gathered queens, now a healthy distance away, “Begin.”

The queens looked at each other, then their wide-eyed guards, and snaked toward the Cauldron, their smiles growing. Wolves circling prey. One of them sniped at another for pushing her—the king murmured something to them all that I didn’t bother to hear.

Jurian stalked over to Lucien amid the rising squabble, laughing under his breath. “Do you know what Illyrian bastards do to pretty females? You won’t have a mate left—at least not one that’s useful to you in any way.”

Lucien’s answering growl was nothing short of feral.

I spat at Jurian’s feet. “You can go to hell, you hideous prick.”

Tamlin’s hands tightened on my shoulders. Lucien spun toward me, and that metal eye whirred and narrowed. Centuries of cultivated reason clicked into place.

I was not panicking at my sisters being taken.

I said quietly, “We will get her back.”

But Lucien was watching me warily. Too warily.

I said to Tamlin, “Take me home.”

But the king cut in over the bickering of the queens, “Where is it.”

I preferred the amused, arrogant voice to the flat, brutal one that sliced through the hall.

“You—
you
were to wield the Book of Breathings,” the king said. “I could feel it in here, with …”

The entire castle shuddered as he realized I had not been holding it in my jacket.

I just said to him, “Your mistake.”

His nostrils flared. Even the sea far below seemed to recoil in terror at the wrath that whitened his ruddy face. But he blinked and it was gone. He said tightly to Tamlin, “When the Book is retrieved, I expect your presence here.”

Power, smelling of lilac and cedar and the first bits of green, swirled around me. Readying us to winnow away—through the wards they had no inkling I’d smashed apart.

So I said to the king, and Jurian, and the queens assembled, already at the lip of the Cauldron and hissing over who would go in first, “I will light your pyres myself for what you did to my sisters.”

Then we were gone.

C
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R

68

Rhysand

I slammed into the floor of the town house, and Amren was instantly there, hands on Cassian’s wings, swearing at the damage. Then at the hole in Azriel’s chest.

Even her healing couldn’t fix both. No, we’d need a real healer for each of them, and fast, because if Cassian lost those wings … I knew he’d prefer death. Any Illyrian would.

“Where is she?” Amren demanded.

Where is she where is she where is she

“Get the Book out of here,” I said, dumping the pieces onto the ground. I hated the touch of them, their madness and despair and joy. Amren ignored the order.

Mor hadn’t appeared—dropping off or hiding Nesta and Elain wherever she deemed safest.

“Where is she?” Amren said again, pressing a hand to Cassian’s ravaged back. I knew she didn’t mean Mor.

As if my thoughts had summoned her, my cousin appeared—panting, haggard. She dropped to the floor before Azriel, her blood-caked hands shaking as she ripped the arrow free of his chest, blood
showering the carpet. She shoved her fingers over the wound, light flaring as her power knit bone and flesh and vein together.

“
Where is she
?” Amren snapped one more time.

I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

So Mor said them for me as she knelt over Azriel, both of my brothers mercifully unconscious. “Tamlin offered passage through his lands and our heads on platters to the king in exchange for trapping Feyre, breaking her bond, and getting to bring her back to the Spring Court. But Ianthe betrayed Tamlin—told the king where to find Feyre’s sisters. So the king had Feyre’s sisters brought with the queens—to prove he could make them immortal. He put them in the Cauldron. We could do nothing as they were turned. He had us by the balls.”

Those quicksilver eyes shot to me. “Rhysand.”

I managed to say, “We were out of options, and Feyre knew it. So she pretended to free herself from the control Tamlin thought I’d kept on her mind. Pretended that she … hated us. And told him she’d go home—but only if the killing stopped. If we went free.”

“And the bond,” Amren breathed, Cassian’s blood shining on her hands as she slowed its dribbling.

Mor said, “She asked the king to break the bond. He obliged.”

I thought I might be dying—thought my chest might actually be cleaved in two.

“That’s impossible,” Amren said. “That sort of bond cannot be broken.”

“The king said he could do it.”

“The king is a fool,” Amren barked. “That sort of bond
cannot
be broken.”

“No, it can’t,” I said.

They both looked at me.

I cleared my head, my shattering heart—breaking for what my mate had done, sacrificed for me and my family. For her sisters. Because she hadn’t thought … hadn’t thought she was essential. Even after
all she had done. “The king broke the bargain between us. Hard to do, but he couldn’t tell that it wasn’t the mating bond.”

Mor started. “Does—does Feyre know—”

“Yes,” I breathed. “And now my mate is in our enemy’s hands.”

“Go get her,” Amren hissed. “
Right now
.”

“
No
,” I said, and hated the word.

They gaped at me, and I wanted to roar at the sight of the blood coating them, at my unconscious and suffering brothers on the carpet before them.

But I managed to say to my cousin, “Weren’t you listening to what Feyre said to him? She promised to destroy him—from within.”

Mor’s face paled, her magic flaring on Azriel’s chest. “She’s going into that house to take him down. To take them all down.”

I nodded. “She is now a spy—with a direct line to me. What the King of Hybern does, where he goes, what his plans are, she will know. And report back.”

For between us, faint and soft, hidden so none might find it … between us lay a whisper of color, and joy, of light and shadow—a whisper of
her
. Our bond.

“She’s your mate,” Amren bit at me. “Not your spy.
Go get her
.”

“She is my mate. And my spy,” I said too quietly. “And she is the High Lady of the Night Court.”

“What?” Mor whispered.

I caressed a mental finger down that bond now hidden deep, deep within us, and said, “If they had removed her other glove, they would have seen a second tattoo on her right arm. The twin to the other. Inked last night, when we crept out, found a priestess, and I swore her in as my High Lady.”

“Not—not consort,” Amren blurted, blinking. I hadn’t seen her surprised in … centuries.

“Not consort, not wife. Feyre is High Lady of the Night Court.” My equal in every way; she would wear my crown, sit on a throne beside
mine. Never sidelined, never designated to breeding and parties and child-rearing. My queen.

As if in answer, a glimmer of love shuddered down the bond. I clamped down on the relief that threatened to shatter any calm I feigned having.

“You mean to tell me,” Mor breathed, “that my High Lady is now surrounded by enemies?” A lethal sort of calm crept over her tear-stained face.

“I mean to tell you,” I said, watching the blood clot on Cassian’s wings with Amren’s tending. Beneath Mor’s own hands, Azriel’s bleeding at last eased. Enough to keep them alive until the healer got here. “I mean to tell you,” I said again, my power building and rubbing itself against my skin, my bones, desperate to be unleashed upon the world, “that your High Lady made a sacrifice for her court—and we will move when the time is right.”

Perhaps Lucien being Elain’s mate would help—somehow. I’d find a way.

And then I’d assist my mate in ripping the Spring Court, Ianthe, those mortal queens, and the King of Hybern to shreds. Slowly.

“Until then?” Amren demanded. “What of the Cauldron—of the Book?”

“Until then,” I said, staring toward the door as if I might see her walk through it, laughing and vibrant and beautiful, “we go to war.”

C
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R

69

Feyre

Tamlin landed us in the gravel of the front drive.

I had forgotten how quiet it was here.

How small. Empty.

Spring bloomed—the air gentle and scented with roses.

Still lovely. But there were the front doors he’d sealed me behind. There was the window I’d banged on, trying to get out. A pretty, rose-covered prison.

But I smiled, head throbbing, and said through my tears, “I thought I’d never see it again.”

Tamlin was just staring at me, as if not quite believing it. “I thought you would never, either.”

And you sold us out—sold out every innocent in this land for that. All so you could have me back.

Love—love was a balm as much as it was a poison.

But it was love that burned in my chest. Right alongside the bond that the King of Hybern hadn’t so much as touched, because he hadn’t known how deep and far he’d have to delve to cleave it. To cleave me and Rhysand apart.

It had hurt—hurt like hell to have the bargain between us ended—and Rhys had done his job perfectly, his horror flawless. We had always been so good at playing together.

I had not doubted him, had not said anything but
Yes
when he’d taken me down to the temple the night before, and I’d sworn my vows. To him, to Velaris, to the Night Court.

And now … a gentle, loving stroke down that bond, concealed beneath that wasteland where the bargain had been. I sent a glimmer of feeling back down the line, wishing I could touch him, hold him, laugh with him.

But I kept those thoughts clear from my face. Kept anything but quiet relief from it as I leaned into Tamlin, sighing. “It feels—feels as if some of it was a dream, or a nightmare. But … But I remembered you. And when I saw you there today, I started clawing at it, fighting, because I knew it might be my only chance, and—”

“How did you break free of his control,” Lucien said flatly from behind us.

Tamlin gave him a warning growl.

I’d forgotten he was there. My sister’s mate. The Mother, I decided, did have a sense of humor. “I wanted it—I don’t know how. I just wanted to break free of him, so I did.”

We stared each other down, but Tamlin brushed a thumb over my shoulder. “Are—are you hurt?”

I tried not to bristle. I knew what he meant. That he thought Rhysand would do anything like that to anyone— “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “I don’t … I don’t remember those things.”

Lucien’s metal eye narrowed, as if he could sense the lie.

But I looked up at Tamlin, and brushed my hand over his mouth. My bare, empty skin. “You’re real,” I said. “You freed me.”

It was an effort not to turn my hands into claws and rip out his eyes. Traitor—liar. Murderer.

“You freed yourself,” Tamlin breathed. He gestured to the house.
“Rest—and then we’ll talk. I … need to find Ianthe. And make some things very, very clear.”

“I—I want to be a part of it this time,” I said, halting when he tried to herd me back into that beautiful prison. “No more … No more shutting me out. No more guards. Please. I have so much to tell you about them—bit and pieces, but … I can help. We can get my sisters back. Let me help.”

Help lead you in the wrong direction. Help bring you and your court to your knees, and take down Jurian and those conniving, traitorous queens. And then tear Ianthe into tiny, tiny pieces and bury them in a pit no one can find.

Tamlin scanned my face, and finally nodded. “We’ll start over. Do things differently. When you were gone, I realized … I’d been wrong. So wrong, Feyre. And I’m sorry.”

Too late. Too damned late. But I rested my head on his arm as he slipped it around me and led me toward the house. “It doesn’t matter. I’m home now.”

“Forever,” he promised.

“Forever,” I parroted, glancing behind—to where Lucien stood in the gravel drive.

His gaze on me. Face hard. As if he’d seen through every lie.

As if he knew of the second tattoo beneath my glove, and the glamour I now kept on it.

As if he knew that they had let a fox into a chicken coop—and he could do nothing.

Not unless he never wanted to see his mate—Elain—again.

I gave Lucien a sweet, sleepy smile. So our game began.

We hit the sweeping marble stairs to the front doors of the manor.

And so Tamlin unwittingly led the High Lady of the Night Court into the heart of his territory.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENT
s

Thank you to the following people who make my life blessed beyond all measure:

To my husband, Josh: You got me through this year. (Through many years before it, but this one in particular.) I don’t have the words to describe how much I love you, and how grateful I am for all that you do. For the countless meals you cooked so I didn’t have to stop writing; for the hundreds of dishes you washed afterward so I could run back into my office and keep working; for the hours of dog-walking, especially those early mornings, just so I could get some sleep … This book is now a
real
book because of you. Thank you for carrying me when I was too weary, for wiping away my tears when my heart was heavy, and for coming with me on so many adventures around the world.