A Court of Thorns and Roses

  It was, but I was too nauseated to notice. Keeping my head up was an effort, let alone keeping the food down. He unclasped his cloak and set it around my shoulders. Its heavy warmth leaked into me. “Look at all this,” he said, staring at the paint on me. Thankfully, it was all intact, save for a few places on my waist. “Bastard.”

  “What happened?” I got out, even though I wasn’t sure I truly wanted the answer. My memory was a dark blur of wild music.

  Lucien drew back. “I don’t think you want to know.” I studied the few smudges on my waist, marks that looked like hands had held me.

  “Who did that to me?” I asked quietly, my eyes tracing the arc of the spoiled paint.

  “Who do you think?”

  My heart clenched and I looked at the floor. “Did—did Tamlin see it?”

  Lucien nodded. “Rhys was only doing it to get a rise out of him.”

  “Did it work?” I still couldn’t look Lucien in the face. I knew, at least, that I hadn’t been violated beyond touching my sides. The paint told me that much.

  “No,” Lucien said, and I smiled grimly.

  “What—what was I doing the whole time?” So much for Alis’s warning.

  Lucien let out a sharp breath, running a hand through his red hair. “He had you dance for him for most of the night. And when you weren’t dancing, you were sitting in his lap.”

  “What kind of dancing?” I pushed.

  “Not the kind you were doing with Tamlin on Solstice,” Lucien said, and my face heated. From the murkiness of my memories of last night, I recalled the closeness of a certain pair of violet eyes—eyes that sparkled with mischief as they beheld me.

  “In front of everyone?”

  “Yes,” Lucien replied—more gently than I’d heard him speak to me before. I stiffened. I didn’t want his pity. He sighed and grabbed my left arm, examining the tattoo. “What were you thinking? Didn’t you know I’d come as soon as I could?”

  I yanked my arm from him. “I was dying! I had a fever—I was barely able to keep conscious! How was I supposed to know you’d come? That you even understood how quickly humans can die of that sort of thing? You told me you hesitated that time with the naga.”

  “I swore an oath to Tamlin—”

  “I had no other choice! You think I’m going to trust you after everything you said to me at the manor?”

  “I risked my neck for you during your task. Was that not enough?” His metal eye whirred softly. “You offered up your name for me—after all that I said to you, all I did, you still offered up your name. Didn’t you realize I would help you after that? Oath or no oath?”

  I hadn’t realized it would mean anything to him at all. “I had no other choice,” I said again, breathing hard.

  “Don’t you understand what Rhys is?”

  “I do!” I barked, then sighed. “I do,” I repeated, and glared at the eye in my palm. “It’s done with. So you needn’t hold to whatever oath you swore to Tamlin to protect me—or feel like you owe me anything for saving you from Amarantha. I would have done it just to wipe the smirk off your brothers’ faces.”

  Lucien clicked his tongue, but his remaining russet eye shone. “I’m glad to see you didn’t sell your lively human spirit or stubbornness to Rhys.”

  “Just a week of my life every month.”

  “Yes, well—we’ll see about that when the time comes,” he growled, that metal eye flicking to the door. He stood. “I should go. The rotation’s about to shift.”

  He made it a step before I said, “I’m sorry—that she still punished you for helping me during my task. I heard—” My throat tightened. “I heard what she made Tamlin do to you.” He shrugged, but I added, “Thank you. For helping me, I mean.”

  He walked to the door, and for the first time I noticed how stiffly he moved. “It’s why I couldn’t come sooner,” he said, his throat bobbing. “She used her—used our powers to keep my back from healing. I haven’t been able to move until today.”

  Breathing became a little difficult. “Here,” I said, removing his cloak and standing to hand it to him. The sudden cold sent gooseflesh rippling over me.

  “Keep it. I swiped it off a dozing guard on my way in here.” In the dim light, the embroidered symbol of a sleeping dragon glimmered. Amarantha’s coat of arms. I grimaced, but shrugged it on.

  “Besides,” Lucien added with a smirk, “I’ve seen enough of you through that gown to last a lifetime.” I flushed as he opened the door.

  “Wait,” I said. “Is—is Tamlin all right? I mean … I mean that spell Amarantha has him under to make him so silent …”

  “There’s no spell. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Tamlin is keeping quiet to avoid telling Amarantha which form of your torment affects him most?”

  No, it hadn’t.

  “He’s playing a dangerous game, though,” Lucien said, slipping out the door. “We all are.”

  The next night, I was again washed, painted, and brought to that miserable throne room. Not a ball this time—just some evening entertainment. Which, it turned out, was me. After I drank the wine, though, I was mercifully unaware of what was happening.

  Night after night, I was dressed in the same way and made to accompany Rhysand to the throne room. Thus I became Rhysand’s plaything, the harlot of Amarantha’s whore. I woke with vague shards of memories—of dancing between Rhysand’s legs as he sat in a chair and laughed; of his hands, stained blue from the places they touched on my waist, my arms, but somehow, never more than that. He had me dance until I was sick, and once I was done retching, told me to begin dancing again.

  I awoke ill and exhausted each morning, and though Rhysand’s order to the guards had indeed held, the nightly activities left me thoroughly drained. I spent my days sleeping off the faerie wine, dozing to escape the humiliation I endured. When I could, I contemplated Amarantha’s riddle, turning over every word—to no avail.

  And when I again entered that throne room, I was allowed only a glimpse of Tamlin before the drug of the wine took hold. But every time, every night, just for that one glance, I didn’t hide the love and pain that welled in my eyes when they met his.

  I had finished being painted and dressed—my gossamer gown a shade of blood orange that night—when Rhysand entered the room. The shadow maids, as usual, walked through the walls and vanished. But rather than beckon me to come with him, Rhysand closed the door.

  “Your second trial is tomorrow night,” he said neutrally. The gold-and-silver thread in his black tunic shone in the candlelight. He never wore another color.

  It was like a stone to the head. I’d lost count of the days. “So?”

  “It could be your last,” he said, and leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms.

  “If you’re taunting me into playing another game of yours, you’re wasting your breath.”

  “Aren’t you going to beg me to give you a night with your beloved?”

  “I’ll have that night, and all the ones after, when I beat her final task.”

  Rhysand shrugged, then flashed a grin as he pushed off the door and stepped toward me. “I wonder if you were this prickly with Tamlin when you were his captive.”

  “He never treated me like a captive—or a slave.”

  “No—and how could he? Not with the shame of his father and brothers’ brutality always weighing on him, the poor, noble beast. But perhaps if he’d bothered to learn a thing or two about cruelty, about what it means to be a true High Lord, it would have kept the Spring Court from falling.”

  “Your court fell, too.”

  Sadness flickered in those violet eyes. I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not … felt it—deep inside me. My gaze drifted to the eye etched in my palm. What manner of tattoo, exactly, had he given me? But instead I asked, “When you were roaming freely on Fire Night—at the Rite—you said it cost you. Were you one of the High Lords that sold allegiance to Amarantha in exchange for not being forced to live down here?”

  Wha
tever sadness had been in his eyes vanished—only cold, glittering calm remained. I could have sworn a shadow of mighty wings stained the wall behind him. “What I do or have done for my Court is none of your concern.”

  “And what has she been doing for the past forty-nine years? Holding court and torturing everyone as she pleases? To what end?” Tell me about the threat she poses to the human world, I wanted to beg—tell me what all of this means, why so many awful things had to happen.

  “The Lady of the Mountain needs no excuses for her actions.”

  “But—”

  “The festivities await.” He gestured to the door behind him.

  I knew I was on dangerous ground, but I didn’t care. “What do you want with me? Beyond taunting Tamlin.”

  “Taunting him is my greatest pleasure,” he said with a mock bow. “And as for your question, why does any male need a reason to enjoy the presence of a female?”

  “You saved my life.”

  “And through your life, I saved Tamlin’s.”

  “Why?”

  He winked, smoothing his blue-black hair. “That, Feyre, is the real question, isn’t it?”

  With that, he led me from the room.

  We reached the throne room, and I braced myself to be drugged and disgraced again. But it was Rhysand the crowd looked at—Rhysand whom Lucien’s brothers monitored. Amarantha’s clear voice rang out over the music, summoning him.

  He paused, glancing at Lucien’s brothers stalking toward us, their attention pinned on me. Eager, hungry—wicked. I opened my mouth, not too proud to ask Rhysand not to leave me alone with them while he dealt with Amarantha, but he put a hand on my back and nudged me along.

  “Just stay close, and keep your mouth shut,” he murmured in my ear as he led me by the arm. The crowd parted as if we were on fire, revealing all too soon what was before us.

  Not us, I amended, but Rhysand.

  A brown-skinned High Fae male was sobbing on the floor before the dais. Amarantha was smiling at him like a snake—so intently that she didn’t even spare me a glance. Beside her, Tamlin remained utterly impassive. A beast without claws.

  Rhysand flicked his eyes to me—a silent command to stay at the edge of the crowd. I obeyed, and when I lifted my attention to Tamlin, waiting for him to look—just look at me—he did not, his focus wholly on the queen, on the male before her. Point taken.

  Amarantha caressed her ring, watching every movement that Rhysand made as he approached. “The summer lordling,” she said of the male cowering at her feet, “tried to escape through the exit to the Spring Court lands. I want to know why.”

  There was a tall, handsome High Fae male standing at the crowd’s edge—his hair near-white, eyes of crushing, crystal blue, his skin of richest mahogany. But his mouth was drawn as his attention darted between Amarantha and Rhysand. I’d seen him before, during that first task—the High Lord of the Summer Court. Before, he’d been shining—almost leaking golden light; now he was muted, drab. As if Amarantha had leeched every last drop of power from him while she interrogated his subject.

  Rhysand slid his hands into his pockets and sauntered closer to the male on the ground.

  The Summer faerie cringed, his face shining with tears. My own bowels turned watery with fear and shame as he wet himself at the sight of Rhysand. “P-p-please,” he gasped out.

  The crowd was breathless, too silent.

  His back to me, Rhysand’s shoulders were loose, not a stitch of clothing out of place. But I knew his talons had latched onto the faerie’s mind the moment the male stopped shaking on the ground.

  The High Lord of Summer had gone still, too—and it was pain, real pain, and fear that shone in those stunning blue eyes. Summer was one of the courts that had rebelled, I remembered. So this was a new, untested High Lord, who had not yet had to make choices that cost him lives.

  After a moment of silence, Rhysand looked at Amarantha. “He wanted to escape. To get to the Spring Court, cross the wall, and flee south into human territory. He had no accomplices, no motive beyond his own pathetic cowardice.” He jerked his chin toward the puddle of piss beneath the male. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the Summer High Lord sag a bit—enough to make me wonder … wonder what sort of choice Rhys had made in that moment he’d taken to search the male’s mind.

  But Amarantha rolled her eyes and slouched in her throne. “Shatter him, Rhysand.” She flicked a hand at the High Lord of the Summer Court. “You may do what you want with the body afterward.”

  The High Lord of the Summer Court bowed—as if he’d been given a gift—and looked to his subject, who had gone still and calm on the floor, hugging his knees. The male faerie was ready—relieved.

  Rhys slipped a hand out of his pocket, and it dangled at his side. I could have sworn phantom talons flickered there as his fingers curled slightly.

  “I’m growing bored, Rhysand,” Amarantha said with a sigh, again fiddling with that bone. She hadn’t looked at me once, too focused on her current prey.

  Rhysand’s fingers curled into a fist.

  The faerie male’s eyes went wide—then glazed as he slumped to the side in the puddle of his own waste. Blood leaked from his nose, from his ears, pooling on the floor.

  That fast—that easily, that irrevocably … he was dead.

  “I said shatter his mind, not his brain,” Amarantha snapped.

  The crowd murmured around me, stirring. I wanted nothing more than to fade back into it—to crawl back into my cell and burn this from my mind. Tamlin hadn’t flinched—not a muscle. What horrors had he witnessed in his long life if this hadn’t broken that distant expression, that control?

  Rhysand shrugged, his hand sliding back into his pocket. “Apologies, my queen.” He turned away without being dismissed, and didn’t look at me as he strode for the back of the throne room. I fell into step beside him, reining in my trembling, trying not to think about the body sprawled behind us, or about Clare—still nailed to the wall.

  The crowd stayed far, far back as we walked through it. “Whore,” some of them softly hissed at him, out of her earshot; “Amarantha’s whore.” But many offered tentative, appreciative smiles and words—“Good that you killed him; good that you killed the traitor.”

  Rhysand didn’t deign to acknowledge any of them, his shoulders still loose, his footsteps unhurried. I wondered whether anyone but he and the High Lord of the Summer Court knew that the killing had been a mercy. I was willing to bet that there had been others involved in that escape plan, perhaps even the High Lord of the Summer Court himself.

  But maybe keeping those secrets had only been done in aid of whatever games Rhysand liked to play. Maybe sparing that faerie male by killing him swiftly, rather than shattering his mind and leaving him a drooling husk, had been another calculated move, too.

  He didn’t pause once on that long trek across the throne room, but when we reached the food and wine at the back of the room, he handed me a goblet and downed one alongside me. He didn’t say anything before the wine swept me into oblivion.

  Chapter 40

  My second task arrived.

  Its teeth gleaming, the Attor grinned at me as I stood before Amarantha. Another cavern—smaller than the throne room, but large enough to perhaps be some sort of old entertaining space. It had no decorations, save for its gilded walls, and no furniture; the queen herself only sat on a carved wooden chair, Tamlin standing behind her. I didn’t gaze too long at the Attor, who lingered on the other side of the queen’s chair, its long, slender tail slashing across the floor. It only smiled to unnerve me.

  It was working. Not even gazing at Tamlin could calm me. I clenched my hands at my sides as Amarantha smiled.

  “Well, Feyre, your second trial has come.” She sounded so smug—so certain that my death hovered nearby. I’d been a fool to refuse death in the teeth of the worm. She crossed her arms and propped her chin on a hand. Within the ring, Jurian’s eye turned—turned to face me, its pupil dilating in the d
im light. “Have you solved my riddle yet?”

  I didn’t deign to make a response.

  “Too bad,” she said with a moue. “But I’m feeling generous tonight.” The Attor chuckled, and several faeries behind me gave hissing laughs that snaked their way up my spine. “How about a little practice?” Amarantha said, and I forced my face into neutrality. If Tamlin was playing indifferent to keep us both safe, so would I.

  But I dared a glance at my High Lord, and found his eyes hard upon me. If I could just hold him, feel his skin for just a moment—smell him, hear him say my name …

  A slight hiss echoed across the room, dragging my gaze away. Amarantha was frowning up at Tamlin from her seat. I hadn’t realized we’d been staring at each other, the cavern wholly silent.

  “Begin,” Amarantha snapped.

  Before I could brace myself, the floor shuddered.

  My knees wobbled, and I swung my arms to keep upright as the stones beneath me began sinking, lowering me into a large, rectangular pit. Some faeries cackled, but I found Tamlin’s stare again and held it until I was lowered so far down that his face disappeared beyond the edge.

  I scanned the four walls around me, looking for a door, for any sign of what was to come. Three of the walls were made of a single sheet of smooth, shining stone—too polished and flat to climb. The other wall wasn’t a wall at all, but an iron grate splitting the chamber in two, and through it—

  My breath caught in my throat. “Lucien.”

  Lucien lay chained to the center of the floor on the other side of the chamber, his remaining russet eye so wide that it was surrounded with white. The metal one spun as if set wild; his brutal scar was stark against his pale skin. Again he was to be Amarantha’s toy to torment.

  There were no doors, no way for me to get to his side except to climb over the gate between us. It had such thick, wide holes that I could probably climb it to jump onto his side. I didn’t dare.

  The faeries began murmuring, and gold clinked. Had Rhysand bet on me again? In the crowd, red hair gleamed—four heads of red hair—and I stiffened my spine. I knew his brothers would be smiling at Lucien’s predicament—but where was his mother? His father? Surely the High Lord of the Autumn Court would be present. I scanned the crowd. No sign of them. Only Amarantha, standing with Tamlin at the edge of the pit, peering in. She bowed her head to me and gestured with an elegant hand to the wall beneath her feet.