On and on I repeated those words, through breakfast and lunch, until I returned to the house to freshen up and take a moment for myself.
In the privacy of my room, I set my crown of flowers on the dressing table and smiled slightly at the eye tattooed into my right palm.
The longest day of the year, I said into the bond, sending along flickers of all that had occurred atop that hill. I wish I could spend it with you.
He would have enjoyed my performance—would have laughed himself hoarse afterward at the expression on Ianthe’s face.
I finished washing up and was about to head out into the hills again when Rhysand’s voice filled my mind.
It’d be an honor, he said, laughter in every word, to spend even a moment in the company of Feyre Cauldron-blessed.
I chuckled. The words were distant, strained. Keep it quick—I had to keep it quick, or risk exposure. And more than anything, I needed to ask, to know—
Is everyone all right?
I waited, counting the minutes. Yes. As well as we can be. When do you come home to me?
Each word was quieter than the last.
Soon, I promised him. Hybern is here. I’ll be done soon.
He didn’t reply—and I waited another few minutes before I again donned my flower crown and strode down the stairs.
As I emerged into the bedecked garden, though, Rhysand’s faint voice filled my head once more. I wish I could spend today with you, too.
The words wrapped a fist around my heart, and I forced them from my mind as I returned to the party in the hills, my steps heavier than they’d been when I floated into the house.
But lunch had been cleared away, and dancing had begun.
I saw him waiting on the outskirts of one of the circles, observing every move I took.
I glanced between the grass and the crowd and the cluster of musicians coaxing such lively music from drums and fiddles and pipes as I approached, no more than a shy, hesitant doe.
Once, those same sounds had shaken me awake, had made me dance and dance. I supposed they were now little more than weapons in my arsenal as I stopped before Tamlin, lowered my lashes, and asked softly, “Will you dance with me?”
Relief, happiness, and a slight edge of concern. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, of course.”
So I let him lead me into the swift dance, spinning and tilting me, people gathering to cheer and clap. Dance after dance after dance, until sweat was running down my back as I worked to keep up, keep that smile on my face, to remember to laugh when my hands were within strangling distance of his throat.
The music eventually shifted into something slower, and Tamlin eased us into the melody. When others had found their own partners more interesting to watch, he murmured, “This morning … Are you all right?”
My head snapped up. “Yes. I—I don’t know what that was, but yes. Is Ianthe … mad?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t see it coming—I don’t think she handles surprises very well.”
“I should apologize.”
His eyes flashed. “What for? Perhaps it was a blessing. Magic still surprises me. If she’s angry, it’s her problem.”
I made a show of considering, then nodded. Pressed closer, loathing every place where our bodies touched. I didn’t know how Rhys had endured it—endured Amarantha. For five decades.
“You look beautiful today,” Tamlin said.
“Thank you.” I made myself peer up into his face. “Lucien—Lucien told me that you didn’t complete the Rite at Calanmai. That you refused.”
And you let Ianthe take him into that cave instead.
His throat bobbed. “I couldn’t stomach it.”
And yet you could stomach making a deal with Hybern, as if I were a stolen item to be returned. “Maybe this morning was not just a blessing for me,” I offered.
A stroke of his hand down my back was his only reply.
That was all we said for the next three dances, until hunger dragged me toward the tables where dinner had now been laid out. I let him fill a plate for me, let him serve me himself as we found a spot under a twisted old oak and watched the dancing and the music.
I nearly asked if it was worth it—if giving up this sort of peace was worth it, in order to have me back. For Hybern would come here, use these lands. And there would be no more singing and dancing. Not once they arrived.
But I kept quiet as the sunlight faded and night finally fell.
The stars winked into existence, dim and small above the blazing fires.
I watched them through the long hours of celebrating, and could have sworn that they kept me company, my silent and stalwart friends.
CHAPTER
5
I crawled back to the manor two hours after midnight, too exhausted to last until dawn.
Especially when I noted the way Tamlin looked at me, remembering that dawn last year when he’d led me away and kissed me as the sun rose.
I asked Lucien to escort me, and he’d been more than happy to do so, given that his own status as a mated male made him uninterested in any sort of female company these days. And given that Ianthe had been trying to corner him all day to ask about what had happened at the ceremony.
I changed into my nightgown, a small, lacy thing I’d once worn for Tamlin’s enjoyment and now was glad to don thanks to the day’s sweat still clinging to my skin, and flopped into bed.
For nearly half an hour, I kicked at the sheets, tossing and turning, thrashing.
The Attor. The Weaver. My sisters being thrown into the Cauldron. All of them twined and eddied around me. I let them.
Most of the others were still celebrating when I yelped, a sharp, short cry that had me bouncing from the bed.
My heart thundered along my veins, my bones, as I cracked open the door, sweating and haggard, and padded across the hall.
Lucien answered on the second knock.
“I heard you—what’s wrong.” He scanned me, russet eye wide as he noted my disheveled hair, my sweaty nightgown.
I swallowed, a silent question on my face, and he nodded, retreating into the room to let me inside. Bare from the waist up, he’d managed to haul on a pair of pants before opening the door, and hastily buttoned them as I strode past.
His room had been bedecked in Autumn Court colors—the only tribute to his home he’d ever let show—and I surveyed the night-dark space, the rumpled bedsheets. He perched on the rolled arm of a large chair before the blackened fire, watching me wring my hands in the center of the crimson carpet.
“I dream about it,” I rasped. “Under the Mountain. And when I wake up, I can’t remember where I am.” I lifted my now-unmarred left arm before me. “I can’t remember when I am.”
Truth—and half a lie. I still dreamed of those horrible days, but no longer did they consume me. No longer did I run to the bathroom in the middle of the night to hurl my guts up.
“What did you dream of tonight?” he asked quietly.
I dragged my eyes to his, haunted and bleak. “She had me spiked to the wall. Like Clare Beddor. And the Attor was—”
I shuddered, running my hands over my face.
Lucien rose, stalking to me. The ripple of fear and pain at my own words masked my scent enough, masked my own power as my dark snares picked up a slight vibration in the house.
Lucien paused half a foot from me. He didn’t so much as object as I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face against his warm, bare chest. It was seawater from Tarquin’s own gift that slipped from my eyes, down my face, and onto his golden skin.
Lucien loosed a heavy sigh and slid an arm around my waist, the other threading through my hair to cradle my head. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
He held me, stroking soothing lines down my back, and I calmed my weeping, those seawater tears drying up like wet sand in the sun.
I lifted my head from his sculpted chest at last, my fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders as I peered into his
concerned face. I took deep, heaving breaths, my brows knotting and mouth parting as I—
“What’s going on.”
Lucien whipped his head toward the door.
Tamlin stood there, face a mask of cold calm. The beginnings of claws glinted at his knuckles.
We pushed away, too swiftly to be casual. “I had a nightmare,” I explained, straightening my nightgown. “I—I didn’t want to wake the house.”
Tamlin was just staring at Lucien, whose mouth had tightened into a thin line as he marked those claws, still half-drawn.
“I had a nightmare,” I repeated a bit sharply, gripping Tamlin’s arm and leading him from the room before Lucien could so much as open his mouth.
I closed the door, but could still feel Tamlin’s attention fixed on the male behind it. He didn’t sheath his claws. Didn’t summon them any further, either.
I strode the few feet to my room, watching Tamlin assess the hall. The distance between my door and Lucien’s. “Good night,” I said, and shut the door in Tamlin’s face.
I waited the five minutes it took Tamlin to decide not to kill Lucien, and then smiled.
I wondered if Lucien had pieced it together. That I had known Tamlin would come to my room tonight, after I had given him so many shy touches and glances today. That I had changed into my most indecent nightgown not for the heat, but so that when my invisible snares in the house informed me that Tamlin had finally worked up the nerve to come to my bedroom, I’d look the part.
A feigned nightmare, the evidence set into place with my thrashed sheets. I’d left Lucien’s door open, with him too distracted and unsuspecting of why I’d really be there to bother to shut it, or notice the shield of hard air I’d placed around the room so that he wouldn’t hear or scent Tamlin as he arrived.
Until Tamlin saw us there, limbs entwined, my nightgown askew, staring at each other so intently, so full of emotion that we’d either just been starting or finishing up. That we didn’t even notice until Tamlin was right there—and that invisible shield vanished before he could sense it.
A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin.
I was the nightmare.
Preying on what Tamlin had feared from my very first days here.
I had not forgotten that long-ago fight he’d picked with Lucien. The warning he’d given him to stop flirting with me. To stay away. The fear that I’d preferred the red-haired lord over him and that it would threaten every plan he had. Back off, he’d told Lucien.
I had no doubt Tamlin was now running through every look and conversation since then. Every time Lucien had intervened on my behalf, both Under the Mountain and afterward. Weighing how much that new mating bond with Elain held sway over his friend.
Considering how this very morning, Lucien had knelt before me, swearing fealty to a newborn god, as if we had both been Cauldron-blessed.
I let myself smile for a moment longer, then dressed.
There was more work to do.
CHAPTER
6
A set of keys to the estate gates had gone missing.
But after last night’s incident, Tamlin didn’t appear to care.
Breakfast was silent, the Hybern royals sullen at being kept waiting so long to see the second cleft in the wall, and Jurian, for once, too tired to do anything but shovel meat and eggs into his hateful mouth.
Tamlin and Lucien, it seemed, had spoken before the meal, but the latter made a point to keep a healthy distance from me. To not look at or speak to me, as if still needing to convince Tamlin of our innocence.
I debated asking Jurian outright if he’d stolen the keys from whatever guard had lost them, but the silence was a welcome reprieve.
Until Ianthe breezed in, carefully avoiding acknowledging me, as if I was indeed the blinding sun that had been stolen from her.
“I am sorry to interrupt your meal, but there is a matter to discuss, High Lord,” Ianthe said, pale robes swirling at her feet as she halted halfway to the table.
All of us perked up at that.
Tamlin, brooding and snarly, demanded, “What is it.”
She made a show of realizing the Hybern royals were present. Listening. I tried not to snort at the oh-so-nervous glance she threw their way, then to Tamlin. The next words were no surprise whatsoever. “Perhaps we should wait until after the meal. When you are alone.”
No doubt a power play, to remind them that she did, in fact, have sway here—with Tamlin. That Hybern, too, might want to remain on her good side, considering the information she bore. But I was cruel enough to say sweetly, “If we can trust our allies in Hybern to go to war with us, then we can trust them to use discretion. Go ahead, Ianthe.”
She didn’t so much as look in my direction. But now caught between outright insult and politeness … Tamlin weighed our company against Ianthe’s posture and said, “Let’s hear it.”
Her white throat bobbed. “There is … My acolytes discovered that the land around my temple is … dying.”
Jurian rolled his eyes and went back to his bacon.
“Then tell the gardeners,” Brannagh said, returning to her own food. Dagdan snickered into his cup of tea.
“It is not a matter of gardening.” Ianthe straightened. “It is a blight upon the land. Grass, root, bud—all of it, shriveled up and sickly. It reeks of the naga.”
It was an effort not to glance to Lucien—to see if he also noticed the too-eager gleam in her eye. Even Tamlin loosed a sigh, as if he saw it for what it was: an attempt to regain some ground, perhaps a scheme to poison the earth and then miraculously heal it.
“There are other spots in the woods where things have died and are not coming back,” Ianthe went on, pressing a silver-adorned hand to her chest. “I fear it’s a warning that the naga are gathering—and plan to attack.”
Oh, I’d gotten under her skin. I’d been wondering what she’d do after yesterday’s solstice, after I’d robbed her of her moment and power. But this … Clever.
I hid my smirk down deep and said gently, “Ianthe, perhaps it is a case for the groundskeepers.”
She stiffened, at last facing me. You think you’re playing the game, I itched to tell her, but you have no idea that every choice you made last night and this morning were only steps I nudged you toward.
I jerked my chin toward the royals, then Lucien. “We’re heading out this afternoon to survey the wall, but if the problem remains when we return in a few days, I’ll help you look into it.”
Those silver-ringed fingers curled into loose fists at her sides. But like the true viper she was, Ianthe said to Tamlin, “Will you be joining them, High Lord?”
She looked to me and Lucien—the assessment too lingering to be casual.
A faint, low headache was already forming, made worse with every word out of her mouth. I’d been up too late, and had gotten too little sleep—and I needed my strength for the days ahead. “He will not,” I said, cutting off Tamlin before he could reply.
He set down his utensils. “I think I will.”
“I don’t need an escort.” Let him unravel the layers of defensiveness in that statement.
Jurian snorted. “Starting to doubt our good intentions, High Lord?”
Tamlin snarled at him. “Careful.”
I placed a hand flat on the table. “I’ll be fine with Lucien and the sentries.”
Lucien seemed inclined to sink into his seat and disappear forever.
I surveyed Dagdan and Brannagh and smiled a bit. “I can defend myself, if it comes to that,” I said to Tamlin.
The daemati smiled back at me. I hadn’t felt another touch on my mental barriers, or the ones I’d been working to keep around as many people here as possible. The constant use of my power was wearing on me, however—being away from this place for four or five days would be a welcome relief.
Especially as Ianthe murmured to Tamlin, “Perhaps you should go, my friend.” I waited—waited for whatever nonsense was about to come out of that pouty mouth— “You ne
ver know when the Night Court will attempt to snatch her away.”
I had a blink to debate my reaction. To opt for leaning back in my chair, shoulders curling inward, hauling up those images of Clare, of Rhys with those ash arrows through his wings—any sort of way to dredge my scent in fear. “Have you news?” I whispered.
Brannagh and Dagdan looked very interested at that.
The priestess opened her mouth, but Jurian cut her off, drawling, “There is no news. Their borders are secure. Rhysand would be a fool to push his luck by coming here.”
I stared at my plate, the portrait of bowed terror.
“A fool, yes,” Ianthe countered, “but one with a vendetta.” She faced Tamlin, the morning sun catching in the jewel atop her head. “Perhaps if you returned to him his family’s wings, he might … settle.”
For a heartbeat, silence rippled through me.
Followed by a wave of roaring that drowned out nearly every thought, every self-preserving instinct. I could barely hear over that bellowing in my blood, my bones.
But the words, the offer … A cheap attempt at snaring me. I pretended not to hear, not to care. Even as I waited and waited for Tamlin’s reply.
When Tamlin answered, his voice was low. “I burned them a long time ago.”
I could have sworn there was something like remorse—remorse and shame—in his words.
Ianthe only tsked. “Too bad. He might have paid handsomely for them.”
My limbs ached with the effort of not leaping over the table to smash her head into the marble floor.
But I said to Tamlin, soothing and gentle, “I’ll be fine out there.” I touched his hand, brushing my thumb over the back of his palm. Held his stare. “Let’s not start down this road again.”
As I pulled away, Tamlin merely fixed Lucien with a look, any trace of that guilt gone. His claws slid free, embedding in the scar-flecked wood of his chair’s arm. “Be careful.”
None of us pretended it was anything but a threat.
It was a two-day ride, but took us only a day to get there with winnowing-walking-winnowing. We could manage a few miles at a time, but Dagdan was slower than I’d anticipated, given that he had to carry his sister and Jurian.