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and the night sky—whorls of yellow stars standing in for white—around mine.
a promise was currency; a promise was your bond.
“Someone once did the same for me and mine, at a time when we needed it most. Figure it’s time to repay what’s due.”
She’d sooner put a knife in your back than talk to you—or any of us.”
Perhaps he could tell why I’d really asked.
“Something was sent from the shit-holes of Hell,” he said, then glanced around and swore. “I shouldn’t have said that. If word got back to her—”
if not a High Lord, then a High Lady.
I don’t clean everything in sight or lure mortals to a watery death or grant you answers to whatever questions you might have if you trap me.
“The Suriel. But they’re old and wicked, and not worth the danger of going out to find them.
will grind your bones between my claws; I will drink your marrow; I will feast on your flesh. I am what you fear; I am what you dread … Look at me. Look at me.
A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless. Summer sunrise. A refreshing bath in a forest pool. Meetings with Isaac, losing myself for an hour or two in his body, in our shared breaths.
And above that, perched in a frozen mountainous spread of darkness and stars, the sprawling, massive territory of the Night Court.
“Stay with the High Lord, human,”
Against slavery, against tyranny, I would gladly go to my death, no matter whose freedom I was defending.”
He smiled at me still, broadly and without restraint or hesitation. Isaac had never smiled at me like that. Isaac had never made my breath catch, just a little bit.
and a pale, faceless woman dragging her bloodred nails across my throat, splitting me open bit by bit. She kept asking for my name, but every time I tried to speak, my blood bubbled out of the shallow wounds on my neck, choking me.
“Cauldron save you,” he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the mortal realm. “Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain.” Tamlin’s voice wavered, but he finished. “Go, and enter eternity.”
Slowly, so slowly, his eyes roved down, then up. As if he were studying every inch, every curve of me. And even though I wore my ivory underthings, that gaze alone stripped me bare.
And though my dreams continued to be plagued by the deaths I’d witnessed, the deaths I’d caused, and that horrible pale woman ripping me to shreds—all watched over by a shadow I could never quite glimpse—I slowly stopped being so afraid. Stay with the High Lord. You will be safe. So I did.
Not realizing that I craved his warmth, his nearness, until he was gone.
When he finished, I tipped back my head and howled, my laughter like sunshine shattering age-hardened ice.
“They’re setting up bonfires—for Calanmai. It’s in two days.”
There was a string—a string tied to my gut that pulled me toward those hills, commanding me to go, to hear the faerie drums …
They were strong hands—warm and broad.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you,” said a deep, sensual male voice I’d never heard.
Standing before me was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
His short black hair gleamed like a raven’s feathers, offsetting his pale skin and blue eyes so deep they were violet, even in the firelight.
As if he’d been molded from the night itself.
I had never seen anyone so handsome—and never had so many warning bells pealed in my head because of it.
“No, we were originally from the Summer Court—that’s where my kin still dwells.”
I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.
“What do you want, Rhysand?”
But Nesta had gone with that mercenary. My hateful, cold sister had been willing to brave Prythian to rescue me.
And when I finished my story, Nesta merely stared at me for a long while before asking me to teach her how to paint.
He had put me before his entire court, before all of Prythian.
“Ask for Nesta—my eldest sister. She knows who you are, knows everything. She will shelter you in any way she can.”
There are those who seek me a lifetime but never we meet, And those I kiss but who trample me beneath ungrateful feet. At times I seem to favor the clever and the fair, But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare. By large, my ministrations are soft-handed and sweet, But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat. For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow, When I kill, I do it slow
“As wonderful as it is to see you, Feyre, darling,”
It took me a long while to realize that Rhysand, whether he knew it or not, had effectively kept me from shattering completely.
“For what she gave,” Rhysand said, extending a hand, “we’ll bestow what our predecessors have granted to few before.”
But it would have been easier to live with it …” My throat welled. “Easier to live with what I did if my heart had changed, too. Maybe I wouldn’t care so much; maybe I could convince myself their deaths weren’t in vain. Maybe immortality will take that away. I can’t tell whether I want it to.”
“Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.”
