A Court of Wings and Ruin

  The wrong thing to say. Utterly wrong, by the dark fury that rippled across Helion’s face. “Beron is a High Lord, and she is his wife, mother of his brood. She chose to stay. Chose. And with the protocols and rules, Lady, you will find that most situations like the one you were in do not end well for those who interfere.”

  I didn’t back down, didn’t apologize. “You barely even looked at her today.”

  “We have more important matters at hand.”

  “Beron never called you out for it?”

  “To publicly do so would be to admit that his possession made a fool of him. So we continue our little dance, these centuries later.” I somehow doubted that beneath that roguish charm and irreverence, Helion felt it was a dance at all.

  But if it had ended centuries ago, and she’d never seen him again, had let Beron treat her so abominably …

  Whatever you’ve just figured out, Rhys said, you’d better stop looking so shocked by it.

  I forced a smile to my face. “You High Lords really do love your melodrama, don’t you?”

  Helion’s own smile didn’t reach his eyes. But Rhys asked, “In your libraries, have you ever encountered a mention of how the wall might be repaired?”

  Helion began asking why we wanted to know, what Hybern was doing with the Cauldron … and Rhys fed him answers, easily and smoothly.

  While we spoke, I said down the bond, Helion is Lucien’s father.

  Rhys was silent. Then—

  Holy burning hell.

  His shock was a shooting star between us.

  I let my gaze dart through the room, half paying attention to Helion’s musing on the wall and how to repair it, then dared study the High Lord for a heartbeat. Look at him. The nose is the same, the smile. The voice. Even Lucien’s skin is darker than his brothers’. A golden brown compared to their pale coloring.

  It would explain why his father and brothers detest him so much—why they have tormented him his entire life.

  My heart squeezed at that. And why Eris didn’t want him dead. He wasn’t a threat to Eris’s power—his throne. I swallowed. Helion has no idea, does he?

  It would seem not.

  The Lady of Autumn’s favorite son—not only from Lucien’s goodness. But because he was the child she’d dreamed of having … with the male she undoubtedly loved.

  Beron must have discovered the affair when she was pregnant with Lucien.

  He likely suspected, but there was no way to prove it—not if she was sharing his bed, too. Rhys’s disgust was a tang in my mouth. I have no doubt Beron debated killing her for the betrayal, and even afterward. When Lucien could be passable as his own offspring—just enough to make him doubt who had sired his last son.

  I wrapped my head around it. Lucien not Beron’s son, but Helion’s. His power is flame, though. They’ve mused Beron’s title could go to him.

  His mother’s family is strong—that was why Beron wanted a bride from their line. The gift could be hers.

  You never suspected?

  Not once. I’m mortified I didn’t even consider it.

  What does this mean, though?

  Nothing—ultimately nothing. Other than the fact that Lucien might be Helion’s sole heir.

  And that … it changed nothing in this war. Especially not with Lucien on the continent, hunting that enchanted queen. A bird of flame … and a lord of fire. I wondered if they’d found each other yet.

  A door opened and shut in the foyer beyond, and I braced myself as Nesta appeared. Helion paused his debating the wall to survey her carefully, as he had done earlier.

  Spell-Cleaver. That was his title.

  She surveyed him with her usual disdain.

  But Helion gave her the same bow he’d offered me—though his smile was edged with enough sensuality that even my heart raced a bit. No wonder the Lady of Autumn hadn’t stood a chance. “I don’t think we were introduced properly earlier,” he crooned to Nesta. “I’m—”

  “I don’t care,” Nesta said with a snap of her wrist, striding right past him and up to my side. “I’d like a word,” she said. “Now.”

  Cassian was biting his knuckle to keep from laughing—at the utter surprise and shock on Helion’s face. It wasn’t every day, I supposed, that anyone of either sex dismissed him so thoroughly. I threw the High Lord a semi-apologetic glance and led my sister out of the room.

  “What is it?” I asked when Nesta and I had entered her bedroom, the space bedecked in pink silk and gold, accents of ivory scattered throughout. The lavishness of it indeed put our various homes to shame.

  “We need to leave,” Nesta said. “Right now.”

  Every sense went on alert. “Why?”

  “It feels wrong. Something feels wrong.”

  I studied her, the clear sky beyond the towering, drape-framed windows. “Rhys and the others would sense it. You’re likely just picking up on all the power gathered here.”

  “Something is wrong,” Nesta insisted.

  “I’m not doubting you feel that way but … If none of the others are picking it up—”

  “I am not like the others.” Her throat bobbed. “We need to leave.”

  “I can send you back to Velaris, but we have things to discuss here—”

  “I don’t care about me, I—”

  The door opened, and Cassian stalked in, face grave. The sight of the wings, the Illyrian armor in this opulent, pink-filled room planted itself in my mind, the painting already taking form, as he said, “What’s wrong.”

  He studied every inch of her. As if there were nothing and no one else here, anywhere.

  But I said, “She senses something is off—says we need to leave right away.”

  I waited for the dismissal, but Cassian angled his head. “What, precisely, feels wrong?”

  Nesta stiffened, mouth pursing as she weighed his tone. “It feels like there’s this … dread. This sense that … that I forgot something but can’t remember what.”

  Cassian stared at her for a moment longer. “I’ll tell Rhys.”

  And he did.

  Within moments, Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel had vanished, leaving Mor and Helion in alert silence. I waited with Nesta. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.

  Thirty minutes later, they returned, shaking their heads. Nothing.

  Not in the palace, not in the lands around it, not in the skies above or the earth below. Not for miles and miles. Nothing. Rhys even checked with Amren, and found nothing amiss in Velaris—Elain, mercifully, safe and sound.

  None of them, however, were stupid enough to suggest that Nesta had made it up. Not with that otherworldly power in her veins. Or that perhaps the dread was a lingering effect of her time in Hybern. Like the crushing panic that I’d struggled to face down, that still stalked me some nights.

  So we stayed. We ate in our private dining room, Helion joining us, no sign of Tarquin or Thesan—certainly not Tamlin.

  Kallias and Viviane appeared midway through the meal, and Mor kicked Cassian out of his seat to make space for her friend. They chatted and gossiped—even though Mor kept glancing at Helion.

  And the High Lord of Day kept glancing at her.

  Azriel barely spoke, those shadows still perched on his shoulders. Mor barely looked at him.

  But we dined and drank for hours, until night was overhead. And though Rhys and Kallias were tense, careful around each other … By the end of the meal, they were at least talking.

  Nesta was the first to leave the table, still wary and on edge. The others made one final check of the grounds before we tumbled into the silk sheets of our cloud-soft beds.

  Rhys and I left Mor and Helion talking knee to knee on the sitting room cushions, Viviane and Kallias long returned to their suite. I had no idea where Azriel went off to—or Cassian, for that matter.

  And when I emerged from washing up in the ivory-and-gold bathing room and Helion’s deep murmur and Mor’s sultry laugh flitted in from the hall—when it moved past our door and then her door cre
aked open and closed …

  Rhysand’s wings were folded in tightly as he surveyed the stars beyond the bedroom windows. Quieter and smaller here, somehow.

  “Why?”

  He knew what I meant.

  “Mor gets spooked. And what Az did today scared the shit out of her.”

  “The violence?”

  “The violence as a result of what he feels, lingering guilt over the deal with Eris—and what neither of them will face.”

  “Don’t you think it’s been long enough? And that taking Helion to bed is likely the worst possible thing to do?”

  But I had no doubt Helion needed a distraction as much as Mor did. From thinking too long about the people they loved—who they could not have.

  “Mor and Azriel have both taken lovers throughout the centuries,” he said, wings shifting slightly. “The only difference here is the close proximity.”

  “You sound remarkably fine with this.”

  Rhys glanced over a shoulder to where I lingered by the foot of the massive ivory bed, its carved headboard fashioned after overlapping waterlilies. “It’s their life—their relationship. They have both had plenty of opportunities to confess what they feel. Yet they have not. Mor especially. For private reasons of her own, I’m sure. My meddling isn’t going to make it any better.”

  “But—but he loves her. How can he sit idly by?”

  “He thinks she’s happier without him.” His eyes shone with the memory—of his own choice to sit back. “He thinks he’s unworthy of her.”

  “It seems like an Illyrian trait.”

  Rhys snorted, returning to the stars. I came up to his side and slid my arm around his waist. He opened his arm to me, cupping my shoulder as I rested my head against that soft spot where his own shoulder met his chest. A heartbeat later, his wing curved around me, too, enveloping me in his shadowed warmth. “There will come a day when Azriel has to decide if he is going to fight for her or let her go. And it won’t be because some other male insults her or beds her.”

  “And what about Cassian? He’s entangled—and enabling this nonsense.”

  A wry smile. “Cassian is going to have to decide some things, too. In the near future, I think.”

  “Are he and Nesta …?”

  “I don’t know. Until the bond snaps into place, it can be hard to detect.” Rhys swallowed once, gaze fixed on the stars. I simply waited. “Tamlin still loves you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “That was an ugly encounter.”

  “All of it was ugly,” I said. What Beron and Tamlin had brought up with Amarantha, what Rhys had been forced to reveal … “Are you all right?” I could still feel the clamminess of his hand upon mine as he spoke of what Amarantha had done.

  He brushed a thumb down my shoulder. “It wasn’t … easy.” He amended, “I thought I’d vomit all over the floor.”

  I squeezed him a little tighter. “I’m sorry you had to share those things—sorry you … sorry for all of it, Rhys.” I breathed in his scent, taking it deep into my lungs. Out—we had made it out. “And I know it likely means nothing, but … I’m proud of you. That you were brave enough to tell them.”

  “It doesn’t mean nothing,” he said softly. “That you feel that way about me—about today.” He kissed my temple, and warmth flickered along the bond. “It means …” His wing curved closer around me. “I don’t have the words to tell you what it means.” But as that love, that joy and light shimmered through the bond … I understood.

  He peered down at me. “And are you … all right?”

  I nestled my head further into his chest. “I just feel … tired. Sad. Sad that it turned so awful—and yet … yet furious about everything that happened to me, to my sisters. I …” I blew out a long breath. When I was back at the Spring Court …” I swallowed. “I looked—for their wings.”

  Rhys went utterly still, and I took his hand, squeezing hard as he only said, “Did you find them?” The words were barely a brush of air.

  I shook my head, but said before the grief on his face could grow, “I learned that he burned them—long ago.”

  Rhys said nothing for a lingering moment, his attention returning to the stars. “Thank you for even thinking—for risking to look for them.” The only trace—the horrific remnants—of his mother and sister. “I didn’t … I’m glad he burned them,” Rhys admitted. “I could happily kill him, for so many things, and yet …” He rubbed his chest. “I’m glad he offered them that peace, at least.”

  I nodded. “I know.” I ran my thumb over the back of his hand. And perhaps because of the raw, stark quiet, I confessed, “It feels strange, to share a room, a bed, with you under the same roof as him.”

  “I can imagine.”

  For somewhere in this palace, Tamlin was lying in bed—well aware that I was about to enter this one with Rhysand. The past tangled and snarled, and I whispered, “I don’t think—I don’t think I can have sex here. With him so close.” Rhys remained quiet. “I’m sorry if—”

  “You don’t need to apologize. Ever.”

  I looked up, finding his gaze on me—not angry or frustrated, but … sad. Knowing. “I want to share this bed with you, though,” I breathed. “I want you to hold me.”

  Stars flickered to life in his eyes. “Always,” he promised, kissing my brow, his wings now enveloping me completely. “Always.”

  CHAPTER

  48

  Helion slipped from Mor’s room before we were awake—though I certainly heard them throughout the night. Enough so that Rhys put a shield around our room. Azriel and Cassian didn’t return at all.

  Mor didn’t look like a female who had been tumbling with a gorgeous High Lord, however, as she picked at her breakfast. There was something vacant in her brown eyes, a paleness to her ordinarily golden skin.

  Cassian strutted in at last, greeting Mor with a chipper, “You look terrible—Helion keep you up all night?”

  She threw her spoon at him. Then her porridge.

  Cassian caught the first and shielded against the other, his Siphon blazing like an awakening ember. Porridge slid to the floor.

  “Helion wanted you to join,” she mildly replied, refilling her tea. “Quite badly.”

  “Maybe next time,” Cassian said, dropping into the seat beside me. “How’s your sister?”

  “She seemed fine—still worried.” I didn’t ask where he and Azriel had been all night. If only because I wasn’t sure Mor wanted to hear the answer.

  Cassian served himself from the platters of fruits and pastries, frowning at the lack of meat. “Ready for another day full of arguing and plotting?”

  Mor and I grumbled. Rhys strode in, hair still damp from his bath, and grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

  Despite the fraught day ahead, I smiled at my mate.

  He’d held me all night, tucked against his chest, his wing draped over me. A different sort of intimacy than the sex—deeper. Our souls entwined, holding tight.

  I’d awoken to his wing still over me, his breath tickling my ear. My throat had closed up as I’d studied his sleeping face, my chest tightening to the point of pain. I was well aware how wildly I loved him, but looking at him then … I felt it in every pore of my body, felt it as if it might crush me, consume me. And the next time someone insulted him …

  The thought was still prowling through my mind as we finished breakfast, dressed, and returned to that chamber atop the palace. To begin forming the backbone of this alliance.

  I kept the crown from yesterday, but swapped my Starfall gown for one of glittering black, the dress made up of solid ebony silk overlaid with shimmering obsidian gossamer. Its skirts flowed behind me, the tight sleeves tapered to points that brushed the center of my hand, looped into place around my middle finger with an attached onyx ring. If I was a fallen star yesterday, today Rhys’s mysterious clothier had made me into the Queen of the Night.

  The rest of my companions had dressed accordingly.

  Yester
day, we had been ourselves—open and friendly and caring. Today we showed the other courts what we’d unleash upon our enemies. What we were capable of if provoked.

  Helion was back to his edged, swaggering aloofness, lounging in his chair as we entered that lovely chamber atop one of the palace’s many gilded towers. He gave Mor an extra glance, lips curving in sensual amusement. He was resplendent today in robes of cobalt edged in gold that offset his gleaming brown skin, golden sandals upon his feet. Azriel, shadows wafting from his shoulders and trailing at his feet, ignored him as he passed. The shadowsinger hadn’t shown a flicker of emotion, however, to Mor when he’d met us in the foyer.

  She hadn’t asked where he’d been all night and morning, and Azriel had volunteered nothing. But he didn’t seem inclined to ignore her, at least. No, he’d just settled back into his usual watchful quiet, and Mor had been content to let him, slumping a bit in relief as soon as he’d turned to lead us to the meeting, likely having already scouted the walk minutes ago.

  Thesan was the only person who bothered to greet us when we passed through that wisteria-draped archway, but he took one look at our attire, our faces, and muttered a prayer to the Cauldron. His lover, clad in his captain’s armor once more, sized us up, his wings flaring slightly, but kept seated with the other Peregryns.

  Tamlin arrived last, raking his gaze over all of us as he sat. I didn’t bother to acknowledge him.

  And Helion didn’t wait for Thesan to beckon to begin. He merely crossed an ankle over a knee and said, “I thoroughly reviewed the charts and figures you’ve compiled, Tamlin.”

  “And?” Tamlin bit out. Today would go incredibly well, then.

  “And,” Helion said simply, no trace of the laughing, easy male of the night before, “if you can rally your forces quickly, you and Tarquin might be able to hold the front line long enough for those of us above the Middle to bring the larger hosts.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Tamlin said through his teeth. “I have a third of them left.” A seething look toward me. “After Feyre destroyed their faith in me.”

  I had done that—in my rage, my need for vengeance … I had not thought long-term. Had not considered that perhaps we would need that army. But—