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March 27 - May 1, 2024
I still saw that moment, in my sleeping and waking dreams. How his face had looked, how his chest had not risen, how the bond between us had shredded into ribbons. I still felt it, that hollowness in my chest where the bond had been, where he had been.
I tried not to look too relieved that I wouldn’t be dragged to a temple for hours as I nodded.
I clenched my fingers into a fist, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, until the lightness in my limbs faded, until the walls of the room stopped pressing on me.
It was my home. The first I’d really had in the ways that counted. And it’d be nice to celebrate the Solstice here. With all of them, crowded as it might be.
Until I’d been politely, graciously, told to go home and enjoy the holiday.
“She’ll be there,” I said, grinding my teeth, “and she’ll be pleasant. She owes Feyre that much.” Cassian’s eyes flickered. “How is she?” I didn’t bother to put any sort of spin on it. “Nesta is Nesta. She does what she wants, even if it kills her sister. I’ve offered her job after job, and she refuses them all.” I sucked on my teeth. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into her over Solstice.” Cassian’s Siphons gleamed atop his hands. “It’d likely end in violence.”
Ramiel. The sacred mountain. The heart of not only Illyria, but the entirety of the Night Court. None were permitted on its barren, rocky slopes—save for the Illyrians, and only once a year at that. During the Blood Rite.
He could still feel the crumbling rock beneath his boots, hear the rasp of his breathing as he half hauled Rhys up the slopes, Azriel providing cover behind. As one, the three of them had touched the stone—the first to reach its peak at the end of that brutal week. The uncontested winners.
He hadn’t pushed me to step in unless necessary, had granted me the space to figure out the rhythm and style of these audiences and begin asking questions of my own.
Once, all I had wanted was enough food, money, and time to paint. Nothing more. I would have been content to let my sisters wed, to remain and care for my father.
“As one of us,” she said simply. The words settled in, strange and yet like a piece I had not known was missing. An offered hand I had not realized how badly I wanted to grasp. “I’m Feyre,” I said, removing my glove and extending my arm. The faerie clasped my fingers, her grip steel-strong despite her slender build. “Ressina.” Not someone prone to excessive smiling, but still full of a practical sort of warmth.
Ressina met my stare at last, her ochre eyes bright. “We keep away to let you have your privacy, but don’t think for one moment that there isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t know and remember, who isn’t grateful that you came here and fought for us.”
Rhys and Kallias had a still-lukewarm alliance, but it seemed Mor’s relationship with the High Lord of Winter’s mate would be the bridge between our two courts.
His eyes gleamed, and he buried his face between my breasts again, hands caressing my back. “I love you,” he breathed. “More than life, more than my territory, more than my crown.”
“And it takes you two hours to get dressed,” Mor quipped through the door. A sly pause. “And I’m not talking about Feyre.”
Nausea roiled in his gut, even as he offered a smile and strode toward the polished counter. Clipped. She’d been clipped.
He’d seen Nesta in that particular pose, too. He called it her I Will Slay My Enemies pose. Cassian had named about two dozen poses for Nesta at this point. Ranging from I Will Eat Your Eyes for Breakfast to I Don’t Want Cassian to Know I’m Reading Smut. The latter was his particular favorite.
She blinked, and he saw her reassessment. Emerie studied the piled goods. “They—a lot of them don’t like me,” she said, more softly than he’d heard. “They don’t like me, either. You’re in good company.” A reluctant curl of her lips at that. Not quite a smile. Certainly not with a male she didn’t know.
A tug on the bond. Everything all right? A casual, soft question, the cadence of Rhys’s voice soothing the tremors along my nerves.
He’d told me where he planned to go tomorrow. What he planned to inquire about. He’d asked me if I’d like to go with him. I’d said no. I might owe Tamlin my mate’s life, I might have told Tamlin that I wished him peace and happiness, but I did not wish to see him. Speak with him. Deal with him. Not for a good long while. Perhaps forever.
I don’t know if I can do this. Rhys was quiet for a moment. Do you want me to come with you? To paint?
I’d be an excellent nude model. I smiled, not caring that I was by myself in the street with countless people streaming past me. My hood concealed most of my face, anyway. You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like sharing the glory that is you with anyone else. Perhaps I’ll model for you later, then. A sensuous brush down the bond that had my blood heating. It’s been a while since we had paint involved. That cabin and kitchen table flashed into my mind, and my mouth went a bit dry. Rogue. A chuckle. If you want to go in, then go in. If you don’t, then don’t. It’s your call.
It had probably been lovely before the attack: a massive window faced southward, letting in endless sunshine, and skylights—also boarded up—dotted the vaulted ceiling. The gallery in the front was perhaps thirty feet wide, fifty feet deep, with a counter against one wall halfway back, and a door to what had to be the studio space or storage in the rear. A quick examination told me I was half right: storage was in the back, but no natural light for painting. Only narrow windows above a row of cracked sinks, a few metal counters still stained with paint, and old cleaning supplies.
I certainly wasn’t going to bring it back to the town house for someone to find. Even Rhys. But here … No one would know, should someone come in, who had painted it. I hadn’t signed my name. Didn’t want to. If I left it here to dry overnight, if I came back tomorrow, there would certainly be some closet in the House of Wind where I might hide it afterward. Tomorrow, then. I’d come back tomorrow to claim it.
It was Spring, and yet it wasn’t. It was not the land I had once roamed in centuries past, or even visited almost a year ago. The sun was mild, the day clear, distant dogwoods and lilacs still in eternal bloom. Distant—because on the estate, nothing bloomed at all. The pink roses that had once climbed the pale stone walls of the sweeping manor house were nothing but tangled webs of thorns. The fountains had gone dry, the hedges untrimmed and shapeless. The house itself had looked better the day after Amarantha’s cronies had trashed it. Not for any visible signs of destruction, but for the
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A tomb. This place was a tomb. With each step toward what had once been the library, the dust and silence pressed in. Tamlin didn’t speak, didn’t offer any explanations for the vacant house. For the rooms we passed, some of the carved doors cracked open enough for me to behold the destruction inside. Shattered furniture, shredded paintings, cracked walls. Lucien had not come here to make amends during Solstice, I realized as Tamlin opened the door to the dark library. Lucien had come here out of pity. Mercy.
I knew the words found their mark. My mate. Low. It was a low blow. I had everything—everything I’d wished for, dreamed of, begged the stars to grant me. He had nothing. Had been given everything and squandered it. He didn’t deserve my pity, my sympathy. No, Tamlin deserved what he’d brought upon himself, this husk of a life.
I rose from the chair, Tamlin not bothering to stand. “You brought every bit of this upon yourself,” I said, my voice still soft. I didn’t need to yell to convey my rage. I never had. “You won,” he spat, sitting forward. “You got your mate. Is that not enough?” “No.” The word echoed through the library. “You nearly destroyed her. In every way possible.” Tamlin bared his teeth. I bared mine back, temper be damned. Let some of my power rumble through the room, the house, the grounds. “She survived it, though. Survived you. And you still felt the need to humiliate her, belittle her. If you meant
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I nodded, leaning into her touch. The most I could manage. She pressed a kiss to my mouth, her lips warm enough that I realized I’d gone cold. “Walk home with me,” she said, looping her arm through mine and pressing close. I obeyed, taking the bags from her other hand. As the blocks passed and we crossed over the icy Sidra, then up the steep hills, I told her. Everything I’d said to Tamlin. “Having heard you rip into Cassian, I’d say you were fairly mild,” she observed when I’d finished.
When she had worn only those cuffs.
Neve waved a shadowed hand over the tray she’d laid out. “I had selected these earlier, if it’s not too presumptuous, to consider for Lady Amren.” Indeed, these all sang Amren’s name. Large stones, delicate settings. Mighty jewelry, for my mighty friend. Who had done so much for me, my mate—our people. The world. I surveyed the three pieces. Sighed. “I’ll take all of them.”
“Dumping a bunch of trees at my feet is really how you say hello these days? A little time in that Illyrian camp and you forget all your manners.” Cassian was on me in a second, hoisting me off the ground to twirl me until I was going to be sick. I beat at his chest, cursing at him. Cassian set me down at last. “What’d you get me for Solstice?” I smacked his arm. “A heaping pile of shut the hell up.” He laughed again, and I winked at him. “Hot cocoa or wine?” Cassian curved a wing around me, turning us toward the cellar door. “How many good bottles does little Rhysie have left?”
“Az, relax for a minute,” Cassian drawled, waving a hand. “Have some wine. Cookies.” “Take off your coat,” I added, pointing the bottle toward the shadowsinger, who hadn’t even bothered to do so before fixing our mess. Azriel straightened a sagging section of garland over the windowsill. “It’s almost like you two tried to make it as ugly as possible.” Cassian clutched at his heart. “We take offense to that.” Azriel sighed at the ceiling. “Poor Az,” I said, pouring myself another glass. “Wine will make you feel better.”
Like the rest of us, Elain’s recovery was ongoing. She’d wept for hours the day I’d taken her to a wildflower-covered hill on the outskirts of the city—to the marble headstone I’d had erected there in honor of our father.
I waited until I had a stack of steaming slices before I said, “Nesta is still a part of this family.” “Is she?” Elain sawed deep into the next loaf. “She certainly doesn’t act like it.” I hid my frown. “Did something happen when you saw her today?” Elain didn’t answer. She just kept slicing the bread.
“I mean it, Rhysand,” Amren snapped. I didn’t dare meet Mor’s stare. Or Cassian’s. One look and I’d completely dissolve. Amren waved a hand down at herself. “I should have selected a male form. At least you can whip it out and go wherever you like without having to worry about spilling on—” Cassian lost it. Then Mor. Then me. And even Az, chuckling faintly. “You really don’t know how to pee?” Mor roared. “After all this time?” Amren seethed. “I’ve seen animals—” “Tell me you know how a toilet works,” Cassian burst out, slapping a broad hand on the table. “Tell me you know that much.”
And yet my sister managed to find the seediest, most miserable taverns in Velaris. There weren’t many. But she patronized all of them. And this one—the Wolf’s Den—was by far the worst.
“How.” I gestured to the loom, the half-finished piece taking form on its frame, the art on the walls. “How do you keep creating, despite what you lost?” Whether she noted the crack in my voice, she didn’t let on. The weaver only said, her sad, sorrowful gaze meeting mine, “I have to.” The simple words hit me like a blow. The weaver went on, “I have to create, or it was all for nothing. I have to create, or I will crumple up with despair and never leave my bed. I have to create because I have no other way of voicing this.” Her hand rested on her heart, and my eyes burned. “It is hard,” the
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She had lost her husband. I had not. And yet she still wove, still created. I cupped Rhys’s cheek, and he leaned into the touch as I quietly asked, “Do you think it’s stupid to wonder if painting might help others, too? Not my painting, I mean. But teaching others to paint. Letting them paint. People who might struggle the same way I do.” His eyes softened. “I don’t think that’s stupid at all.”
I lowered my hand from his face at last. “Do you think anyone would come? If such a space, such a thing, were available?”
A smaller smile this time, her red mouth quirking to the side as she fitted another piece into her puzzle. “He decided the ones he brought from the Summer Court were not enough.”
I took a steadying breath. “It’s about Nesta.” “I suspected as much.” “Have you spoken to her?” “She comes here every few days.” “Really?” Amren tried and failed to fit a piece into her puzzle, her eyes darting over the color-sorted pieces around her. “Is it so hard to believe?”
“I like her because so few do. I like her because she is not easy to be around, or to understand.” “But?” “But nothing,” Amren said, returning to the puzzle. “Because I like her, I am not inclined to gossip about her current state.” “It’s not gossip. I’m concerned.” We all were. “She is starting down a path that—” “I will not betray her confidence.”
I kept my face neutral. Az and I had agreed to wait until after the holiday to divulge to Cassian the full extent of what we knew, who we suspected or knew was behind it. We’d told him the basics, though. Enough to assuage any sort of guilt.
I shut out the thought. Later. After Solstice. We’d deal with it then.
Nesta had made it clear enough she had no interest in Cassian—not even in being in the same room as him. I knew why. I’d seen it happen, had felt that way plenty.
It was an effort to leash every raging instinct at that particular view. At the curves and hollows of my mate, the color of her—so vibrant, even in this room of so many personalities. Her midnight-blue velvet gown hugged her perfectly, leaving little to the imagination before it pooled to the floor. She’d left her hair down, curling slightly at the ends—hair I knew I later wanted to plunge my hands into, scattering the silver combs pinning up the sides. And then I’d peel off that dress. Slowly.
Nesta isn’t coming. You invited her for tomorrow. I sent a soothing caress down the bond, as if it could wipe away the disappointment rippling from her. Feyre’s hand tightened on my shoulder.
I leaned down to kiss him, a brush of our mouths. From the corner of my eye, I saw another item appear on my pillow. I pulled back to see a second present waiting, the large box wrapped in amethyst paper. “More?”
Rhys waved a lazy hand, pure Illyrian arrogance. “Did you think a sketchbook would suffice for my High Lady?”
