A Court of Mist and Fury

  Had the others known? Had they guessed?

  He’d—he’d promised not to lie, not to keep things from me.

  And this—this most important thing in my immortal existence …

  I drew a dagger across my forearm, the cut long and deep, and dropped to my knees before him. I didn’t feel the pain. “Drink this. Now.”

  Rhys blinked again, brows raising, but I didn’t give him the chance to object before I gripped the back of his head, lifted my arm to his mouth, and shoved him against my skin.

  He paused as my blood touched his lips. Then his mouth opened wider, his tongue brushing my arm as he sucked in my blood. One mouthful. Two. Three.

  I yanked back my arm, the wound already healing, and shoved down my sleeve.

  “You don’t get to ask questions,” I said, and he looked up at me, exhaustion and pain lining his face, my blood shining on his lips. Part of me hated the words, for acting like this while he was wounded, but I didn’t care. “You only get to answer them. And nothing more.”

  Wariness flooded his eyes, but he nodded, biting off another mouthful of the weed and chewing.

  I stared down at him, the half-Illyrian warrior who was my soul-bonded partner.

  “How long have you known that I’m your mate?”

  Rhys stilled. The entire world stilled.

  He swallowed. “Feyre.”

  “How long have you known that I’m your mate?”

  “You … You ensnared the Suriel?” How he’d pieced it together, I didn’t give a shit.

  “I said you don’t get to ask questions.”

  I thought something like panic might have flashed over his features. He chewed again on the plant—as if it instantly helped, as if he knew that he wanted to be at his full strength to face this, face me. Color was already blooming on his cheeks, perhaps from whatever healing was in my blood.

  “I suspected for a while,” Rhys said, swallowing once more. “I knew for certain when Amarantha was killing you. And when we stood on the balcony Under the Mountain—right after we were freed, I felt it snap into place between us. I think when you were Made, it … it heightened the smell of the bond. I looked at you then and the strength of it hit me like a blow.”

  He’d gone wide-eyed, had stumbled back as if shocked—terrified. And had vanished.

  That had been over half a year ago.

  My blood pounded in my ears. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Feyre.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to yesterday. Or whenever you’d noticed that it wasn’t just a bargain between us. I hoped you might realize when I took you to bed, and—”

  “Do the others know?”

  “Amren and Mor do. Azriel and Cassian suspect.”

  My face burned. They knew—they— “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were in love with him; you were going to marry him. And then you … you were enduring everything and it didn’t feel right to tell you.”

  “I deserved to know.”

  “The other night you told me you wanted a distraction, you wanted fun. Not a mating bond. And not to someone like me—a mess.” So the words I’d spat after the Court of Nightmares had haunted him.

  “You promised—you promised no secrets, no games. You promised.”

  Something in my chest was caving in on itself. Some part of me I’d thought long gone.

  “I know I did,” Rhys said, the glow returning to his face. “You think I didn’t want to tell you? You think I liked hearing you wanted me only for amusement and release? You think it didn’t drive me out of my mind so completely that those bastards shot me out of the sky because I was too busy wondering if I should just tell you, or wait—or maybe take whatever pieces that you offered me and be happy with it? Or that maybe I should let you go so you don’t have a lifetime of assassins and High Lords hunting you down for being with me?”

  “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear you explain how you assumed that you knew best, that I couldn’t handle it—”

  “I didn’t do that—”

  “I don’t want to hear you tell me that you decided I was to be kept in the dark while your friends knew, while you all decided what was right for me—”

  “Feyre—”

  “Take me back to the Illyrian camp. Now.”

  He was panting in great, rattling gulps. “Please.”

  But I stormed to him and grabbed his hand. “Take me back now.”

  And I saw the pain and sorrow in his eyes. Saw it and didn’t care, not as that thing in my chest was twisting and breaking. Not as my heart—my heart—ached, so viciously that I realized it’d somehow been repaired in these past few months. Repaired by him.

  And now it hurt.

  Rhys saw all that and more on my face, and I saw nothing but agony in his as he rallied his strength and, grunting in pain, winnowed us into the Illyrian camp.

  CHAPTER

  51

  We slammed into freezing mud right outside the little stone house.

  I think he’d meant to winnow us into it, but his powers had given out. Across the yard, I spied Cassian—and Mor—at the window of the house, eating breakfast. Their eyes went wide, and then they were rushing for the door.

  “Feyre,” Rhys groaned, bare arms buckling as he tried to rise.

  I left him lying in the mud and stormed toward the house.

  The door flung open, and Cassian and Mor were sprinting for us, scanning every inch of our bodies. Cassian realized I was in one piece and hurtled for Rhys, who was struggling to rise, mud covering his bare skin, but Mor—Mor saw my face.

  I went up to her, cold and hollow. “I want you to take me somewhere far away,” I said. “Right now.” I needed to get away—needed to think, to have space and quiet and calm.

  Mor looked between us, biting her lip.

  “Please,” I said, and my voice broke on the word.

  Behind me, Rhys moaned my name again.

  Mor scanned my face once more, and gripped my hand.

  We vanished into wind and night.

  Brightness assaulted me, and I gobbled up my surroundings: mountains and snow all around, fresh and gleaming in the midday light, so clean against the dirt on me.

  We were high up on the peaks, and about a hundred yards away, a log cabin stood tucked between two upper fangs of the mountains, shielding it from the wind. The house was dark—there was nothing around it for as far as I could see.

  “The house is warded, so no one can winnow in. No one can get beyond this point, actually, without our family’s permission.” Mor stepped ahead, snow crunching under her boots. Without the wind, the day was mild enough to remind me that spring had dawned in the world, though I’d bet it would be freezing once the sun vanished. I trailed after her, something zinging against my skin. “You’re—allowed in,” Mor said.

  “Because I’m his mate?”

  She kept wading through the knee-high snow. “Did you guess, or did he tell you?”

  “The Suriel told me. After I went to hunt it for information on how to heal him.”

  She swore. “Is he—is he all right?”

  “He’ll live,” I said. She didn’t ask any other questions. And I wasn’t feeling generous enough to supply further information. We reached the door to the cabin, which she unlocked with a wave of her hand.

  A main, wood-paneled room consisting of a kitchen to the right, a living area with a leather sofa covered in furs to the left; a small hall in the back that led to two bedrooms and a shared bathing room, and nothing else.

  “We got sent up here for ‘reflection’ when we were younger,” Mor said. “Rhys used to smuggle in books and booze for me.”

  I cringed at the sound of his name. “It’s perfect,” I said tightly. Mor waved a hand, and a fire sprang to life in the hearth, heat flooding the room. Food landed on the counters of the kitchen, and something in the pipes groaned. “No need for firewood,”
she said. “It’ll burn until you leave.” She lifted a brow as if to ask when that would be.

  I looked away. “Please don’t tell him where I am.”

  “He’ll try to find you.”

  “Tell him I don’t want to be found. Not for a while.”

  Mor bit her lip. “It’s not my business—”

  “Then don’t say anything.”

  She did, anyway. “He wanted to tell you. And it killed him not to. But … I’ve never seen him so happy as he is when he’s with you. And I don’t think that has anything to do with you being his mate.”

  “I don’t care.” She fell silent, and I could feel the words she wanted to say building up. So I said, “Thank you for bringing me here.” A polite dismissal.

  Mor bowed her head. “I’ll check back in three days. There are clothes in the bedrooms, and all the hot water you want. The house is spelled to take care of you—merely wish or speak for things, and it’ll be done.”

  I only wanted solitude and quiet, but … a hot bath sounded like a nice way to start.

  She left the cottage before I could say anything else.

  Alone, no one around for miles, I stood in the silent cabin and stared at nothing.

  PART THREE

  THE HOUSE OF MIST

  CHAPTER

  52

  There was a deep, sunken tub in the floor of the mountain cabin—large enough to accommodate Illyrian wings. I filled it with water near-scalding, not caring how the magic of this house operated, only that it worked. Hissing and wincing, I climbed in.

  Three days without a bath and I could have wept at the warmth and cleanliness of it.

  No matter that I’d once gone weeks without one—not when drawing hot water for it in my family’s cottage had been more trouble than it was worth. Not when we didn’t even have a bathtub and it required buckets and buckets to get clean.

  I washed with dark soap that smelled of smoke and pine, and when I was done, I sat there, watching the steam slither amongst the few candles.

  Mate.

  The word chased me from the bath sooner than I wanted, and hounded me as I pulled on the clothes I’d found in a drawer of the bedroom: dark leggings, a large, cream-colored sweater that hung to mid-thigh, and thick socks. My stomach grumbled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the day before, because—

  Because he’d been injured, and I’d gone out of my mind—absolutely insane—when he’d been taken from me, shot out of the sky like a bird.

  I’d acted on instinct, on a drive to protect him that had come from so deep in me …

  So deep in me—

  I found a container of soup on the wood counter that Mor must have brought in, and scrounged up a cast iron pot to heat it. Fresh, crusty bread sat near the stove, and I ate half of it while waiting for the soup to warm.

  He’d suspected it before I’d even freed us from Amarantha.

  My wedding day … Had he interrupted to spare me from a horrible mistake or for his own ends? Because I was his mate, and letting me bind myself to someone else was unacceptable?

  I ate my dinner in silence, with only the murmuring fire for company.

  And beneath the barrage of my thoughts, a throb of relief.

  My relationship with Tamlin had been doomed from the start. I had left—only to find my mate. To go to my mate.

  If I were looking to spare us both from embarrassment, from rumor, only that—only that I had found my true mate—would do the trick.

  I was not a lying piece of traitorous filth. Not even close. Even if Rhys … Rhys had known I was his mate.

  While I’d shared a bed with Tamlin. For months and months. He’d known I was sharing a bed with him, and hadn’t let it show. Or maybe he didn’t care.

  Maybe he didn’t want the bond. Had hoped it’d vanish.

  I’d owed nothing to Rhys then—had nothing to apologize for.

  But he’d known I’d react badly. That it’d hurt me more than help me.

  And what if I had known?

  What if I had known that Rhys was my mate while I’d loved Tamlin?

  It didn’t excuse his not telling me. Didn’t excuse the recent weeks, when I’d hated myself so much for wanting him so badly—when he should have told me. But … I understood.

  I washed the dishes, swept the crumbs off the small dining table between the kitchen and living area, and climbed into one of the beds.

  Just last night, I’d been curled beside him, counting his breaths to make sure he didn’t stop making them. The night before, I’d been in his arms, his fingers between my legs, his tongue in my mouth. And now … though the cabin was warm, the sheets were cold. The bed was large—empty.

  Through the small glass window, the snow-blasted land around me glowed blue in the moonlight. The wind was a hollow moan, brushing great, sparkling drifts of snow past the cabin.

  I wondered if Mor had told him where I was.

  Wondered if he’d indeed come looking for me.

  Mate.

  My mate.

  Sunlight on snow awoke me, and I squinted at the brightness, cursing myself for not closing the curtains. It took me a moment to remember where I was; why I was in this isolated cabin, deep in the mountains of—I did’t know what mountains these were.

  Rhys had once mentioned a favorite retreat that Mor and Amren had burned to cinders in a fight. I wondered if this was it; if it had been rebuilt. Everything was comfortable, worn, but in relatively good shape.

  Mor and Amren had known.

  I couldn’t decide if I hated them for it.

  No doubt, Rhys had ordered them to keep quiet, and they’d respected his wishes, but …

  I made the bed, fixed breakfast, washed the dishes, and then stood in the center of the main living space.

  I’d run away.

  Precisely how Rhys expected me to run—how I’d told him anyone in their right mind would run from him. Like a coward, like a fool, I’d left him injured in the freezing mud.

  I’d walked away from him—a day after I’d told him he was the only thing I’d never walk away from.

  I’d demanded honesty, and at the first true test, I hadn’t even let him give it to me. I hadn’t granted him the consideration of hearing him out.

  You see me.

  Well, I’d refused to see him. Maybe I’d refused to see what was right in front of me.

  I’d walked away.

  And maybe … maybe I shouldn’t have.

  Boredom hit me halfway through the day.

  Supreme, unrelenting boredom, thanks to being trapped inside while the snow slowly melted under the mild spring day, listening to it drip-drip-dripping off the roof.

  It made me nosy—and once I’d finished going through the drawers and closets of both bedrooms (clothes, old bits of ribbon, knives and weapons tucked between as if one of them had chucked them in and just forgotten), the kitchen cabinets (food, preserved goods, pots and pans, a stained cookbook), and the living area (blankets, some books, more weapons hidden everywhere), I ventured into the supply closet.

  For a High Lord’s retreat, the cabin was … not common, because everything had been made and appointed with care, but … casual. As if this were the sole place where they might all come, and pile into beds and on the couch, and not be anyone but themselves, taking turns with who cooked that night and who hunted and who cleaned and—

  A family.

  It felt like a family—the one I’d never quite had, had never dared really hope for. Had stopped expecting when I’d grown used to the space and formality of living in a manor. To being a symbol for a broken people, a High Priestess’s golden idol and puppet.

  I opened the storeroom door, a blast of cold greeting me, but candles sputtered to life, thanks to the magic that kept the place hospitable. Shelves free of dust (another magical perk, no doubt) gleamed with more food stores. Books, sporting equipment, packs and ropes and, big surprise, more weapons. I sorted through it all, these remnants of adventures past and future,
and almost missed them as I walked past.

  Half a dozen cans of paint.

  Paper, and a few canvases. Brushes, old and flecked with paint from lazy hands.

  There were other art supplies—pastels and watercolors, what looked to be charcoal for sketching, but … I stared at the paint, the brushes.

  Which of them had tried to paint while stuck here—or enjoying a holiday with them all?

  I told myself my hands were trembling with the cold as I reached for the paint and pried open the lid.

  Still fresh. Probably from the magic preserving this place.

  I peered into the dark, gleaming interior of the can I’d opened: blue.

  And then I started gathering supplies.

  I painted all day.

  And when the sun vanished, I painted all through the night.

  The moon had set by the time I washed my hands and face and neck and stumbled into bed, not even bothering to undress before unconsciousness swept me away.

  I was up, brush in hand, before the spring sun could resume its work thawing the mountains around me.

  I paused only long enough to eat. The sun was setting again, exhausted from the dent it’d made in the layer of snow outside, when a knock sounded on the front door.

  Splattered in paint—the cream-colored sweater utterly wrecked—I froze.

  Another knock, light, but insistent. Then—“Please don’t be dead.”

  I didn’t know whether it was relief or disappointment that sank in my chest as I opened the door and found Mor huffing hot air into her cupped hands.

  She looked at the paint on my skin, in my hair. At the brush in my hand.

  And then at what I had done.

  Mor stepped in from the brisk spring night and let out a low whistle as she shut the door. “Well, you’ve certainly been busy.”

  Indeed.

  I’d painted nearly every surface in the main room.

  And not with just broad swaths of color, but with decorations—little images. Some were basic: clusters of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening and deepening into fall leaves. I’d painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window; leaves and crackling flames around the dining table.