A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5)

by Sarah J. Maas

Because this Solstice … it was her birthday. Twenty-one years old. It hit me for a moment, how small that number was. My beautiful, strong, fierce mate, shackled to me— “I know what that look means, you bastard,” Cassian said roughly, “and it’s bullshit. She loves you—in a way I’ve never seen anybody love anyone.”

We eased through the densely packed heart of the Palace, passing beneath a latticework of faelights just beginning to twinkle awake overhead. From a slumbering, quiet place inside me, the painting name flitted by. Frost and Starlight.

“You were born on the longest night of the year.” His fingers again stroked down my back. Lower. “You were meant to be at my side from the very beginning.”

“You drove me out of my mind. All those months. I still don’t quite believe I get to have this. Have you.”

“I love you,” he breathed. “More than life, more than my territory, more than my crown.”

Truth is your gift. Truth is your curse.

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.

“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 weaver said, her stare never leaving mine, “and it hurts, but if I were to stop, if I were to let this loom or the spindle go silent …” She broke my gaze at last to look to her tapestry. “Then there would be no Hope shining in the Void.”

“To the blessed darkness from which we are born, and to which we return.”

“I asked Nuala to do it in that order,” Elain said as the others gathered round. “Because you’re the foundation, the one who lifts us. You always have been.”

Still the silence raged and echoed around her. Still she felt nothing.

Never enough. Not to paint him, know him. Eons would never be enough for all I wanted to do, see with him. For all I wanted to love him.

You make me so very happy. My life is happy, and I will never stop being grateful that you are in it.

To the stars who listen, Feyre. I brushed a hand over his cheek to wipe away the last of his tears, his skin warm and soft, and we turned down the street that would lead us home. Toward our future—and all that waited within it. To the dreams that are answered, Rhys.